The telehandler or telescopic handler is a heavy duty machinery that is well-known within both the construction and agriculture industries. These equipment are quite similar in both function and appearance to the forklift, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler offers increased versatility of a single telescopic boom that could extend forwards as well as upwards from the vehicle. The operator could connect numerous attachments on the boom's end. Several of the most common attachments comprise: a bucket, a muck grab, a lift table or pallet forks.
In order to move loads through areas which are normally not reachable for a conventional forklift. The telehandler uses pallet forks as their most popular attachment. Like for example, telehandlers are able to transport loads to and from locations that are not normally accessible by regular forklift units. These devices can also remove palletized loads from in a trailer and place these loads in high areas, such as on rooftops for instance. Previously, this situation mentioned above would need a crane. Cranes can be expensive to utilize and not always a practical or time-efficient option.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their largest limitation: 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, despite the counterweights on the back. 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.
For example, a vehicle that has a 5000 lb. capacity with the boom retracted might be able to safely lift just as much as 400 pounds when it is fully extended with a low boom angle. The same model with a 5000 lb. lift capacity that has the boom retracted may be able to easily support as heavy as 10,000 lb. with the boom raised up to 70.
England originally pioneered the telehandler in Horley, Surrey. The Matbro Company developed these equipment from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. At first, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front portion. This placed the cab of the driver 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 increasingly more famous.