The telehandler or telescopic handler is a heavy duty equipment that is popular in both the agriculture and construction industries. These machinery are rather 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 as well as upwards from the vehicle. The operator could connect various types of attachments on the boom's end. Some of the most popular attachments consist of: a bucket, a muck grab, a lift table or pallet forks.
A telehandler normally utilizes pallet forks as their most popular attachment to be able to move cargo through places that are usually not reachable for a typical forklift. Like for instance, telehandlers could move loads to and from places which are not normally accessible by conventional forklift models. These devices can also remove palletized loads from within a trailer and position these loads in high locations, such as on rooftops for instance. Before, this situation mentioned above will require a crane. Cranes can be very pricey to use and not always a time-efficient or practical option.
One more advantage is also the telehandlers largest limitation: 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, despite the rear counterweights. 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 completely extended with a low boom angle for instance, the telehandler will only have a 400 pound weight capacity, while a retracted boom can support weights as much as 5000 pounds. The same unit with a 5000 lb. lift capacity which has the boom retracted might be able to easily support as much as 10,000 pounds with the boom raised up to 70.
The Matbro Company within Horley, Surrey, England originally pioneered telehandlers. These equipment were developed 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 machine's rear portion, like in the Teleram 40 unit. The rigid chassis design with a rear mounted boom and the cab situated on the side has since become more popular.