One can find a range 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 also. Additionally, some manufacturers are providing extra features like for example speed controls which can decrease the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more info, there are many available articles on 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 really important part of forklift selection. There seem to be a variety of new players in the forklift industry every year. Even though they offer a good price and a decent forklift design, if they do not offer the regional or local service and support infrastructure, you need to be prepared for major stress when the lift truck breaks. Each and every lift truck model goes down eventually and parts, service and general questions would probably have to be answered at some point.
Generally, you would 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 store. Make certain to ask that if they do not have the component you need, where will it come from? Hopefully, the answer would be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Moreover, try to get some ideas as to how many of those particular models are presently being utilized in your area. This is very important for specialty trucks like turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks in use 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.