One can find a variety of safety features that are common to certain types of trucks such as seat belts on sit-down vehicles. On most stand-up vehicles there are dead-man petals also. Moreover, certain manufacturers are offering more features like for instance speed controls that can reduce the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more info, there are many articles available on Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Support and Service
Making certain you would maintain access to high levels of support and service is a very important part of forklift selection. There seem to be a variety of new players in the lift truck industry each and every year. Although they provide a good price and a decent forklift design, if they do not offer the regional or local service and support infrastructure, you have to be ready for major aggravation when the lift truck goes down. Each model of lift truck goes down at some point and service, parts and general questions would probably need to be addressed at some point.
You would normally want to have a nearby dealer or repair shop with a complete supply of the components you require for your particular model. Be sure to visit the dealership or the repair shop and take a look at their parts room in order to try to understand how many parts they store. Make certain to inquire that if they do not have the part you need, where will it come from? Hopefully, the answer will be from a local or regional distribution facility.
In addition, try to get some ideas as to how many of those specific models are currently being used within your vicinity. This is very important for specialty trucks including 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. Moreover, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that model as well.