There are actually a variety of safety features which are common to certain 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. In addition, certain manufacturers are offering more features like speed controls which could reduce the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more information, there are many available articles about Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Service and Support
Making sure you will maintain access to high levels of support and service is a very important part of lift truck selection. There seem to be a variety of new players within the lift truck industry each and every year. Even though they offer a nice price and a decent forklift design, if they do not offer the regional or local support and service infrastructure, you must be prepared for significant stress when the lift truck goes down. Every lift truck model goes down eventually and parts, service and general questions must be addressed at some point.
Normally, you would want a local dealer or repair shop with a huge 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 understand how many parts they stock. Make certain to ask that if they do not have the component you need, where would it come from? With any luck, the answer would be from a local or regional distribution facility.
In addition, try to get some ideas as to how many of those particular units are currently being used in your vicinity. This is really vital for specialty trucks including turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks in use in their service area that you should assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. What's more, they can have very little overall experience in servicing that specific model too.