The telescopic handler or just telehandler is a heavy duty machinery that is popular within both the construction and agriculture industries. These machinery are rather similar in both function and appearance to the forklift, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler provides increased versatility of a single telescopic boom which could extend upwards and forwards from the vehicle. The operator could connect numerous attachments on the end of the boom. Several of the most popular attachments consist of: a bucket, a muck grab, a lift table or pallet forks.
A telehandler usually utilizes pallet forks as their most popular attachment to be able to move loads through areas that are usually unreachable for a typical forklift. Like for example, telehandlers can move loads to and from locations which are not usually accessible by standard forklift models. These devices could also remove palletized cargo from within a trailer and place these loads in high areas, such as on rooftops for example. Before, this situation mentioned above will require a crane. Cranes can be really pricey to use and not always a practical or time-efficient choice.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their biggest drawback: since 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, even with the rear counterweights. This translates to the lifting capacity decreasing fast as the working radius increases. The working radius is the distance between the center of the load and the front of the wheels.
Once it is fully extended with a low boom angle for example, the telehandler will only have a 400 pound weight capacity, whilst a retracted boom could support weights up to 5000 lb. The same model with a 5000 lb. lift capacity which has the boom retracted might be able to easily support as much as 10,000 lb. with the boom raised up to 70.
The Matbro Company within Horley, Surrey, England initially pioneered telehandlers. These machines were developed from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. Initially, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front section. This positioned the cab of the driver on the back part of the machine, as in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with a rear mounted boom and the cab situated on the side has since become more and more popular.