The telescopic handler or just telehandler is a heavy duty machine that is popular within both the agriculture and construction businesses. These machines are quite similar in both appearance and function to the lift truck, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler offers improved versatility of a single telescopic boom that could extend upwards and forwards from the vehicle. The operator could connect a lot of attachments on the boom's end. Several of the most popular attachments consist of: a bucket, a muck grab, a lift table or pallet forks.
In order to transport cargo through places that are normally unreachable for a conventional forklift. The telehandler uses pallet forks as their most common attachment. Like for instance, telehandlers could move loads to and from areas that are not normally accessible by conventional forklift units. These devices also have the ability to remove palletized loads from in a trailer and place these loads in high areas, such as on rooftops for example. Before, this aforementioned situation will require a crane. Cranes can be very pricey to utilize and not always a time-efficient or practical option.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their largest drawback: because the boom raises or extends when the machinery 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 quickly as the working radius increases. The working radius is the distance between the front of the wheels and the center of the load.
When it is completely extended with a low boom angle for example, the telehandler will only have a 400 pound weight capacity, whereas a retracted boom can support weights as much as 5000 pounds. The same unit with a 5000 lb. lift capacity that has the boom retracted might be able to easily support as much as 10,000 pounds with the boom raised up to 70.
The Matbro Company in Horley, Surrey, England initially pioneered telehandlers. These equipment were developed from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. At first, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front section. This placed the cab of the driver on the back portion of the machinery, like in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with the cab located on the side and a rear mounted boom has since become increasingly more famous.