The majority of reach trucks and forklifts come with a lot of common security features, such as seat belts on sit-down vehicles. Stand-up vehicles will almost always have dead-man petals. Moreover, certain manufacturers are offering more features such as speed controls which are able to decrease the overall speed based on load height and steering angle. For more info, there are numerous articles available about Loading Dock Safety and Lift Truck Safety.
Service and Support
Making sure you will maintain access to high levels of support and service is a very important part of lift truck selection. There seem to be a range of new players in the forklift industry each and every year. Even if 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 should be prepared for significant aggravation when the forklift breaks. Each and every type of lift truck goes down sooner or later and service, parts and general questions would probably need to be answered at some point.
Normally, you would want a local repair shop or dealer with a great supply of components for the specific make and model you are buying. Be sure to visit the dealership or the repair shop and take a look at their parts room so as to try to understand how many parts they stock. Make sure to ask that if they do not have the part you need, where will it come from? Hopefully, the answer would be from a local or regional distribution facility.
Additionally, try to get some ideas as to how many of those specific models are currently being used in your vicinity. This is really vital for specialty trucks like turret trucks. If there are only a small amount of trucks being used in their service area that you must assume they might not be stocking many if any parts for them. Furthermore, they may have very little overall experience in servicing that model as well.