The telescopic handler or just telehandler is a heavy duty machinery that is popular in both the construction and agriculture businesses. These equipment 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 which can extend forwards and upwards from the vehicle. The operator can attach different types of attachments on the boom's end. Several of the most common attachments comprise: a bucket, a muck grab, pallet forks or a lift table.
In order to move loads through locations which are normally not reachable for a typical forklift. The telehandler uses pallet forks as their most popular attachment. For instance, telehandlers could move loads to and from places which are not normally accessible by regular forklift models. These devices also have the ability to remove palletized cargo from in a trailer and place these loads in high places, such as on rooftops for example. Previously, this aforementioned situation will require a crane. Cranes can be really pricey to utilize and not always a time-efficient or practical choice.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their biggest limitation: 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 somewhat 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 center of the load and the front of the wheels.
When it is completely extended with a low boom angle for example, the telehandler would only have a 400 pound weight capacity, whilst a retracted boom can support weights up to 5000 lb. The same model with a 5000 pound 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 machines were developed from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. Initially, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front portion. This positioned the driver's cab on the rear portion of the machinery, as in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with the cab located on the side and a rear mounted boom has ever since become more popular.