The telescopic handler or just telehandler is a heavy duty equipment which is well-known in both the construction and agriculture industries. These machinery are rather similar in both appearance and function to the forklift, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler provides improved versatility of a single telescopic boom that could extend upwards as well as forwards from the vehicle. The operator has the ability to connect numerous attachments on the boom's end. Some of the most common attachments include: a bucket, a muck grab, a lift table or pallet forks.
To be able to transport cargo through locations that are usually not reachable for a standard forklift. The telehandler uses pallet forks as their most common attachment. Like for instance, telehandlers could move cargo to and from areas which are not usually accessible by regular forklift units. These devices also have the ability to remove palletized cargo from within a trailer and place these loads in high areas, such as on rooftops for example. Previously, this aforementioned situation will need a crane. Cranes could be expensive to utilize and not always a time-efficient or practical option.
Another advantage is also the telehandlers biggest limitation: 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 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 completely extended with a low boom angle for instance, the telehandler would just have a 400 pound weight capacity, whilst a retracted boom could support weights as much as 5000 lb. The same unit with a 5000 lb. lift capacity that has the boom retracted may be able to easily support as much as 10,000 lb. with the boom raised up to 70.
The Matbro Company in Horley, Surrey, England first pioneered telehandlers. These machinery were developed from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. Initially, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front portion. This placed the driver's cab on the back portion of the machine, as in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with the cab situated on the side and a rear mounted boom has since become more and more popular.