Most forklifts and lift trucks come with many common safety features, like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles will usually have dead-man petals. Additionally, certain manufacturers are providing extra features like speed controls that could decrease the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more information, there are many available articles on Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Service and Support
A huge part of lift truck selection is to make sure that you maintain access to high levels of support and service. Each and every year, there seems to be a wider variety of new players in the lift truck industry. Although they offer a good price and a decent lift truck design, if they do not provide the regional or local service and support infrastructure, you should be ready for major stress when the lift truck breaks. Each lift truck model goes down at some point and parts, service and general questions must be answered at some point.
Usually, you will want a local repair shop or dealer with a great supply of parts for the particular model and make you are purchasing. Be sure to visit the repair shop or the dealership and check their parts room in order to try to know how many parts they stock. Make certain to inquire that if they do not have the part you require, where would it come from? Hopefully, the answer will be from a regional or local distribution facility.
In addition, try to get some ideas as to how many of those particular units are presently being utilized within your area. This is really vital for specialty trucks including turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being used in their service area that you must assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. In addition, they can have very little overall experience in servicing that model as well.