Most reach trucks and forklifts come with lots of common safety features, like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles will normally have dead-man petals. Additionally, certain manufacturers are providing extra features such as speed controls that could reduce the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more info, there are many articles available on Loading Dock Safety and Lift Truck Safety.
Support and Service
Making sure you will maintain access to high levels of support and service is a hugely essential part of lift truck selection. There seem to be a variety of new players within the forklift industry each and every year. Even though they provide a decent lift truck design and a good price, if they do not offer the local or regional support and service infrastructure, you must be prepared for major aggravation when the forklift breaks. Each type of lift truck goes down eventually and service, parts and general questions must be answered at some point.
Normally, you would want a local dealer or repair shop with a huge supply of components for the particular model and make you are purchasing. Be certain to visit the dealership or the repair shop and check their parts room so as to try to know how many parts they stock. Make certain to inquire that if they do not have the part you need, where would it come from? Hopefully, the answer will 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 within your vicinity. This is really vital for specialty trucks like 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. Furthermore, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that model too.