The telescopic handler or just telehandler is a heavy duty machinery that is popular in both the construction and agriculture businesses. These machinery are quite similar in both appearance and function to the lift truck, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler offers increased versatility of a single telescopic boom that could extend forwards as well as upwards from the vehicle. The operator could connect many attachments on the end of the boom. Some of the most popular attachments consist of: a bucket, a muck grab, pallet forks or a lift table.
To be able to move loads through places that are normally unreachable for a standard forklift. The telehandler utilizes pallet forks as their most popular attachment. For instance, telehandlers can move loads to and from areas which are not typically reachable by conventional forklift units. These devices can also remove palletized loads from within a trailer and place these loads in high areas, such as on rooftops for example. Before, this situation mentioned above will need a crane. Cranes could be pricey to use and not always a practical or time-efficient option.
One more advantage is also the telehandlers biggest limitation: as the boom raises or extends when the equipment is bearing a load, it also acts as a lever and causes the vehicle to become quite unbalanced, despite the counterweights on the rear. 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 fully extended with a low boom angle for example, the telehandler will only have a 400 pound weight capacity, while a retracted boom could support weights as much as 5000 lb. The same unit 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.
England originally pioneered the telehandler in Horley, Surrey. The Matbro Company developed these machines from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. At first, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front section. This positioned the cab of the driver on the back part of the equipment, as in the Teleram 40 unit. The rigid chassis design with a rear mounted boom and the cab situated on the side has ever since become more popular.