The telehandler or telescopic handler is a heavy duty machinery which is well-known 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 that could extend forwards as well as upwards from the vehicle. The operator can connect different types of attachments on the boom's end. Several of the most popular attachments consist of: a bucket, a muck grab, pallet forks or a lift table.
A telehandler usually uses pallet forks as their most popular attachment in order to transport cargo through locations which are normally not reachable for a typical forklift. For example, telehandlers could transport loads to and from areas which are not typically reachable by regular forklift units. These devices could also remove palletized cargo from in a trailer and place these loads in high places, like on rooftops for example. Before, this situation mentioned above will need a crane. Cranes can be very expensive to utilize and not always a practical or time-efficient choice.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their largest drawback: since the boom extends or raises when the machine is bearing a load, it also acts as a lever and causes the vehicle to become somewhat unbalanced, even with the counterweights on the rear. 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.
Once it is completely extended with a low boom angle for instance, the telehandler will just have a 400 pound weight capacity, while a retracted boom can support weights up to 5000 pounds. The same unit with a 5000 pound 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 originally pioneered telehandlers. These equipment were developed from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. Initially, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front section. This positioned the driver's cab on the rear part of the machinery, like in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with the cab located on the side and a rear mounted boom has since become increasingly more popular.