The majority of reach trucks and forklifts are available with lots of common safety features, including seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles would normally have dead-man petals. Moreover, some manufacturers are offering more features like speed controls that could reduce the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more info, there are numerous available articles on Lift Truck Safety and Loading Dock Safety.
Service and Support
Making certain you will maintain access to high levels of service and support is a hugely vital part of forklift selection. There seem to be a variety of new players within the lift truck industry each year. Even if they provide a decent lift truck design and a good price, if they do not offer the regional or local service and support infrastructure, you should be ready for major stress when the forklift breaks. Each and every lift truck model goes down sooner or later and parts, service and general questions should be addressed at some point.
You would usually want to have a nearby dealer or repair shop with a full supply of the components you require for your specific unit. 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 certain to inquire that if they do not have the component you require, where will it come from? Hopefully, the answer would be from a local or regional distribution facility.
Moreover, try to get some ideas as to how many of those particular models are presently being used within your area. This is very important for specialty trucks like 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. What's more, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that model as well.