The telescopic handler or just telehandler is a heavy duty equipment that is popular within both the construction and agriculture businesses. These machines are rather similar in both appearance and function to the forklift, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler offers increased versatility of a single telescopic boom that could extend upwards as well as forwards from the vehicle. The operator has the ability to attach many attachments on the boom's end. Several of the most common attachments consist of: a bucket, a muck grab, pallet forks or a lift table.
In order to transport cargo through areas which are normally not reachable for a conventional forklift. The telehandler utilizes pallet forks as their most popular attachment. For example, telehandlers can transport cargo to and from areas that are not usually accessible by regular forklift models. These devices can also remove palletized cargo from inside a trailer and place these loads in high areas, like on rooftops for example. Before, this abovementioned situation will require a crane. Cranes can be really expensive to use and not always a time-efficient or practical option.
One more advantage is also the telehandlers largest drawback: because the boom extends or raises when the equipment is bearing a load, it also acts as a lever and causes the vehicle to become quite unstable, despite the rear counterweights. This translates to the lifting capacity decreasing fast as the working radius increases. The working radius is the distance between the front of the wheels and the center of the load.
Once it is completely extended with a low boom angle for example, the telehandler would only have a 400 pound weight capacity, whereas a retracted boom could support weights up to 5000 lb. The same model with a 5000 lb. lift capacity that has the boom retracted might be able to easily support as heavy as 10,000 pounds with the boom raised up to 70.
The Matbro Company in Horley, Surrey, England first pioneered telehandlers. These machinery were developed from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. Initially, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front section. This positioned the driver's cab on the rear part of the machinery, like in the Teleram 40 unit. The rigid chassis design with the cab situated on the side and a rear mounted boom has ever since become more popular.