You will find a variety of safety features that are common to certain kinds of trucks including seat belts on sit-down vehicles. On most stand-up vehicles there are dead-man petals also. Additionally, certain manufacturers are offering more features like for instance speed controls which could decrease the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more info, there are numerous available articles about Loading Dock Safety and Lift Truck Safety.
Support and Service
Making sure you will maintain access to high levels of service and support is a hugely important part of forklift selection. There seem to be a variety of new players within the forklift business each year. Although they provide a good price and a decent lift truck design, if they do not offer the regional or local support and service infrastructure, you must be ready for major stress when the forklift breaks. Each and every lift truck model goes down at some point and parts, service and general questions should be answered at some point.
You will generally want to have a nearby repair shop or dealer with a complete supply of the parts you need for your particular unit. Be certain to visit the dealership or the repair shop and take a look at their parts room in order to try to understand how many parts they stock. Make sure to ask that if they do not have the component you require, where will it come from? Hopefully, the answer will 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 vital for specialty trucks like 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. Also, they can have very little overall experience in servicing that particular model as well.