Most reach trucks and forklifts come with lots of common security features, like seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles will normally have dead-man petals. Moreover, some manufacturers are offering extra features such as speed controls that are able to reduce the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more information, there are numerous articles available about Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Service and Support
Making sure you will maintain access to high levels of support and service is a very essential part of forklift selection. There seem to be a range of new players in the lift truck industry each year. Although they provide a good price and a decent forklift design, if they do not provide the local or regional service and support infrastructure, you need to be prepared for significant aggravation when the lift truck goes down. Each lift truck model goes down sooner or later and parts, service and general questions will probably need to be addressed at some point.
Usually, you will want a local repair shop or dealer with a huge supply of parts for the particular model and make you are buying. Be certain to visit the repair shop or the dealership and check their parts room so as to try to understand how many parts they store. Make certain to ask that if they do not have the part you require, where would it come from? Hopefully, the answer would be from a local or regional distribution facility.
Try to get some additional ideas on the units currently utilized in your vicinity. 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 may not be stocking many if any parts for them. Moreover, they can have very little overall experience in servicing that particular model as well.