The telehandler or telescopic handler is a heavy duty machine that is popular in both the construction and agriculture industries. These equipment are rather similar in both appearance and function to the lift truck, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler provides improved versatility of a single telescopic boom that can extend upwards and forwards from the vehicle. The operator has the ability to connect many attachments on the boom's end. Several of the most popular attachments include: a bucket, a muck grab, pallet forks or a lift table.
In order to move loads through places which are normally not reachable for a typical forklift. The telehandler uses pallet forks as their most popular attachment. Like for instance, telehandlers can transport loads to and from places that are not usually accessible by conventional forklift models. These devices could also remove palletized loads from inside a trailer and place these loads in high locations, like on rooftops for example. Before, this situation mentioned above will require a crane. Cranes could be really expensive to use and not always a time-efficient or practical alternative.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their largest limitation: since the boom raises or extends when the machinery is bearing a load, it also acts as a lever and causes the vehicle to become somewhat unstable, 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 front of the wheels and the center of the load.
Once it is completely extended with a low boom angle for example, the telehandler would just have a 400 pound weight capacity, whilst a retracted boom can support weights up to 5000 lb. The same unit with a 5000 lb. lift capacity which 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 within Horley, Surrey, England originally pioneered telehandlers. These machines 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 driver's cab on the machine's rear part, 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 increasingly more famous.