The majority of reach trucks and forklifts come with many common safety features, such as seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles will normally have dead-man petals. In addition, certain manufacturers are offering extra features such as speed controls which are able to decrease the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more info, there are many articles available on Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Support and Service
Making certain you will maintain access to high levels of support and service is a very essential part of lift truck selection. There seem to be a variety of new players within the forklift industry every year. Although they provide a good price and a decent forklift design, if they do not offer the regional or local support and service infrastructure, you should be prepared for significant aggravation when the lift truck breaks. Each and every lift truck model goes down sooner or later and parts, service and general questions must be addressed at some point.
You would normally want to have a nearby repair shop or dealer with a full supply of the components you require for your specific unit. Be certain to visit the repair shop or the dealership and check their parts room in order to try to understand how many parts they stock. Make sure to ask that if they do not have the part you require, where would it come from? With any luck, the answer will be from a local or regional distribution facility.
Furthermore, try to get some ideas as to how many of those particular units are currently being utilized within your vicinity. This is really vital for specialty trucks like turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being utilized in their service area that you should assume they may not be stocking many if any parts for them. Also, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that specific model too.