Most forklifts and lift trucks are available with many common safety features, including seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles will normally have dead-man petals. Furthermore, certain manufacturers are providing more features like speed controls which are able to reduce the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more info, there are numerous articles available on Loading Dock Safety and Lift Truck Safety.
Service and Support
A big part of lift truck selection is to make sure that you maintain access to high levels of service and support. Every year, there seems to be a wider array of new players within the lift truck industry. Even though they offer a decent lift truck design and a nice price, if they do not offer the local or regional support and service infrastructure, you have to be ready for significant stress when the forklift goes down. Every model of lift truck goes down at some point and service, parts and general questions should be addressed at some point.
Usually, you would want a local repair shop or dealer with a huge supply of parts for the specific make and model you are buying. Be sure to visit the dealership or the repair shop and check their parts room in order to try to know how many parts they store. Make sure to inquire that if they do not have the component you need, where will it come from? With any luck, the answer would be from a regional or local distribution facility.
Furthermore, try to get some ideas as to how many of those specific models are currently being utilized within your area. This is very important for specialty trucks including turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being used in their service area that you should assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. Moreover, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that specific model as well.