The telescopic handler or just telehandler is a heavy duty equipment that is popular within both the agriculture and construction businesses. These machines are quite similar in both function and appearance to the lift truck, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler provides improved versatility of a single telescopic boom that could extend forwards and upwards from the vehicle. The operator can attach lots of attachments on the boom's end. Some of the most common attachments consist of: a bucket, a muck grab, pallet forks or a lift table.
A telehandler typically uses pallet forks as their most popular attachment to be able to move cargo through areas which are usually unreachable for a standard forklift. For instance, telehandlers can move cargo to and from places that are not normally reachable by standard forklift models. These devices can also remove palletized loads from in a trailer and place these loads in high locations, such as on rooftops for instance. Previously, this situation mentioned above will need a crane. Cranes could be pricey to utilize and not always a time-efficient or practical choice.
Another advantage is also the telehandlers biggest drawback: as 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, even with the counterweights on the back. This translates to the lifting capacity decreasing quickly as the working radius increases. The working radius is the distance between the center of the load and the front of the wheels.
When it is fully extended with a low boom angle for instance, the telehandler will just have a 400 pound weight capacity, whilst a retracted boom can support weights as much as 5000 lb. The same model with a 5000 pound lift capacity that has the boom retracted may be able to easily support as heavy as 10,000 lb. with the boom raised up to 70.
The Matbro Company in Horley, Surrey, England initially pioneered telehandlers. These machinery were developed from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. Initially, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front portion. This placed the cab of the driver on the machine's back portion, as in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with a rear mounted boom and the cab situated on the side has ever since become more and more popular.