Most reach trucks and forklifts are available with many common security features, like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles would normally have dead-man petals. In addition, certain manufacturers are providing extra features like speed controls which could reduce 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 lift truck selection is to make certain that you maintain access to high levels of support and service. Every year, there seems to be a wider variety of new players in the forklift industry. Even if they offer a good price and a decent lift truck design, if they do not provide the local or regional support and service infrastructure, you must be ready for major stress when the forklift goes down. Each and every lift truck model goes down at some point and service, parts and general questions should be answered at some point.
You will usually want to have a nearby repair shop or dealer with a complete supply of the parts you need for your specific unit. Be sure 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 ask that if they do not have the component you require, where would it come from? Hopefully, the answer will be from a local or regional distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the units presently utilized within your vicinity. This is doubly important 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. In addition, they could have very little overall experience in servicing that model too.