The telescopic handler or just telehandler is a heavy duty machine which is well-known within both the agriculture and construction businesses. These equipment 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 which can extend forwards and upwards from the vehicle. The operator has the ability to connect lots of attachments on the boom's end. Some of the most common attachments consist of: a muck grab, a bucket, a lift table or pallet forks.
A telehandler usually utilizes pallet forks as their most popular attachment in order to move loads through places that are normally not reachable for a conventional forklift. For instance, telehandlers can transport loads to and from areas which are not normally accessible by regular forklift units. These devices could also remove palletized cargo from inside a trailer and place these loads in high areas, such as on rooftops for example. Previously, this abovementioned situation will require a crane. Cranes could be really expensive to use and not always a practical or time-efficient alternative.
Another advantage is also the telehandlers biggest limitation: as the boom raises or extends when the machine is bearing a load, it also acts as a lever and causes the vehicle to become quite unbalanced, 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 would just have a 400 pound weight capacity, whilst a retracted boom can support weights up to 5000 lb. The same unit with a 5000 lb. lift capacity which has the boom retracted might be able to easily support as heavy as 10,000 lb. with the boom raised up to 70.
The Matbro Company within Horley, Surrey, England originally 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 equipment's back part, like in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with a rear mounted boom and the cab situated on the side has since become increasingly more popular.