There are a variety of safety features which are common to particular types of trucks such as seat belts on sit-down vehicles. On the majority of stand-up vehicles there are dead-man petals as well. Additionally, some manufacturers are providing extra features such as speed controls that can decrease the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more information, there are numerous articles available on Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Support and Service
Making sure you would maintain access to high levels of support and service is a hugely vital part of lift truck selection. There seem to be a range of new players in the lift truck industry each and every year. Although they provide a decent lift truck design and a good price, if they do not offer the regional or local support and service infrastructure, you need to be ready for major stress when the forklift goes down. Each and every type of lift truck goes down eventually and parts, service and general questions must be answered at some point.
Generally, you would want a local dealer or repair shop with a great supply of components for the particular make and model you are purchasing. Be sure to visit the repair shop or the dealership and take a look at their parts room so as to try to know how many parts they store. Make sure to ask that if they do not have the part you need, where will it come from? Hopefully, the answer would be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the units currently utilized in your vicinity. This is doubly vital for specialty trucks such as turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being used in their service area that you must assume they may not be stocking many if any parts for them. Additionally, they could have very little overall experience in servicing that model as well.