Most forklifts and lift trucks come with lots of common safety features, including seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles would almost always have dead-man petals. In addition, some manufacturers are offering more features such as speed controls which are able to reduce the overall speed based on steering angle and load height. For more information, there are numerous articles available on Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Support and Service
Making sure you would maintain access to high levels of support and service is a very essential part of lift truck selection. There seem to be a range of new players within the forklift industry each year. Although they offer a decent lift truck design and a good price, if they do not provide the regional or local support and service infrastructure, you must be ready for significant stress when the lift truck goes down. Each model of lift truck goes down eventually and service, parts and general questions must be answered at some point.
Normally, you will want a local repair shop or dealer with a huge supply of components for the specific make and model you are purchasing. Be certain to visit the repair shop or the dealership and check their parts room in order to try to know how many parts they stock. Make sure to inquire that if they do not have the component you need, where would it come from? With a bit of luck, the answer will be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the models presently used in your area. This is doubly important for specialty trucks such as turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks in use in their service area that you must assume they may not be stocking many if any parts for them. Also, they could have very little overall experience in servicing that model as well.