Most forklifts and lift trucks are available with lots of common safety features, like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles would usually have dead-man petals. In addition, some manufacturers are providing extra features such as speed controls that can reduce the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more information, there are many articles available on Loading Dock Safety and Lift Truck Safety.

Service and Support
A big part of lift truck selection is to make certain 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 in the forklift business. Although they offer a decent lift truck design and a nice price, if they do not provide the local or regional support and service infrastructure, you should be ready for significant aggravation when the forklift goes down. Each kind of lift truck goes down eventually and parts, service and general questions would probably have to be answered at some point.

You would generally want to have a nearby repair shop or dealer with a complete supply of the components you need for your specific model. Be certain to visit the dealership or the repair shop and check their parts room in order to try to know how many parts they stock. Make certain to ask that if they do not have the part you require, where would it come from? Hopefully, the answer will be from a regional or local distribution facility.

Try to get some additional ideas on the units currently utilized within your area. This is doubly vital 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 might not be stocking many if any parts for them. Also, they could have very little overall experience in servicing that particular model as well.