The majority of forklifts and lift trucks come with a lot of common security features, like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles will almost always have dead-man petals. Furthermore, some manufacturers are offering extra features such as speed controls which could 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
A big part of forklift selection is to make sure that you maintain access to high levels of service and support. Every year, there seems to be a wider variety of new players within the lift truck industry. Although they offer a decent lift truck design and a good price, if they do not provide the regional or local service and support infrastructure, you must be prepared for major aggravation when the lift truck goes down. Each lift truck model goes down at some point and service, parts and general questions should be addressed at some point.
Usually, you will want a local repair shop or dealer with a great supply of parts for the specific model and make you are buying. 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 ask that if they do not have the part you need, where would it come from? With any luck, the answer would be from a local or regional distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the models presently utilized within 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 may have very little overall experience in servicing that specific model as well.