The majority of forklifts and lift trucks come with a lot of common safety features, like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles would usually have dead-man petals. Moreover, some manufacturers are providing more features like speed controls that are able to decrease the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more info, there are many available articles about Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Support and Service
A huge part of lift truck selection is to make certain that you maintain access to high levels of support and service. Every year, there seems to be a wider array of new players in the lift truck business. Even though they offer a good price and a decent lift truck design, if they do not provide the local or regional service and support infrastructure, you have to be ready for major aggravation when the lift truck breaks. Each model of lift truck goes down sooner or later and parts, service and general questions would probably have to be answered at some point.
Usually, you will want a local repair shop or dealer with a great supply of components for the specific make and model you are purchasing. Be sure to visit the dealership or the repair shop and take a look at their parts room in order to try to know how many parts they store. Make certain to inquire that if they do not have the part you require, where would it come from? Hopefully, the answer would be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the models currently utilized in your vicinity. This is doubly important for specialty trucks such as turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being used in their service area that you should assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. In addition, they can have very little overall experience in servicing that particular model too.