Most reach trucks and forklifts come with a lot of common safety features, like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles would normally have dead-man petals. Moreover, some manufacturers are offering more features such as speed controls which are able to reduce the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more information, there are many articles available about Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Service and Support
Making certain you will maintain access to high levels of support and service is a really vital part of lift truck selection. There seem to be a variety of new players within the lift truck industry each year. Even if they provide a good price and a decent forklift design, if they do not provide the local or regional support and service infrastructure, you should be ready for major aggravation when the forklift goes down. Every type of lift truck goes down eventually and service, parts and general questions will probably need to be addressed at some point.
Normally, you would want a local repair shop or dealer with a huge supply of parts for the specific make and model you are purchasing. Be sure to visit the dealership or the repair shop and check their parts room in order to try to know how many parts they stock. Make certain to inquire that if they do not have the part you need, where will it come from? With any luck, the answer will be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the units presently utilized within your vicinity. This is doubly vital for specialty trucks like turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being utilized in their service area that you must assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. As well, they could have very little overall experience in servicing that particular model as well.