The majority of forklifts and lift trucks are available with a lot of common security features, including seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles will almost always have dead-man petals. Additionally, certain manufacturers are providing more features like speed controls which can decrease the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more information, there are numerous articles available about 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. Each and every year, there seems to be a wider array of new players within the lift truck business. Even if they offer a decent lift truck design and a good price, if they do not provide the local or regional support and service infrastructure, you must be prepared for major stress when the forklift breaks. Every lift truck model goes down sooner or later and service, parts and general questions would probably have to be addressed at some point.
You would generally want to have a nearby repair shop or dealer with a complete supply of the components you require for your particular unit. Be certain to visit the repair shop or the dealership and take a look at their parts room in order to try to understand how many parts they store. Make certain to ask that if they do not have the component you require, where will it come from? Hopefully, the answer will be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the models currently used within your vicinity. This is doubly important for specialty trucks like turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being used in their service area that you should assume they may not be stocking many if any parts for them. As well, they could have very little overall experience in servicing that model as well.