The majority of reach trucks and forklifts come with lots of common security features, including seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles will usually have dead-man petals. Additionally, certain manufacturers are providing more features such as speed controls that could decrease the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more info, there are many articles available about 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. Every year, there seems to be a wider variety of new players within the forklift business. Although they offer a nice price and a decent lift truck design, if they do not offer the local or regional service and support infrastructure, you must be prepared for major aggravation when the lift truck breaks. Each lift truck model goes down eventually and service, parts and general questions must be answered at some point.
You would usually want to have a nearby repair shop or dealer with a full supply of the parts you require for your particular unit. Be sure to visit the repair shop or the dealership and check their parts room so as to try to know how many parts they stock. Make certain to ask that if they do not have the component you require, where will it come from? With any luck, the answer would be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the models presently used in your vicinity. This is doubly vital for specialty trucks such as turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being utilized in their service area that you should assume they may not be stocking many if any parts for them. In addition, they could have very little overall experience in servicing that particular model too.