A telehandler or a telescopic handler is a machinery which is well-known within the construction and agriculture industries. These machines are similar in function and appearance to a lift truck or a forklift but are actually more like a crane rather than a forklift. The telehandler provides improved versatility of a single telescopic boom that could extend upwards as well as forwards from the vehicle. The operator can connect various types of attachments on the boom's end. Several of the most popular attachments include: a muck grab, a bucket, a lift table or pallet forks.
To be able to transport loads through areas that are normally unreachable for a conventional forklift. The telehandler utilizes pallet forks as their most common attachment. Like for instance, telehandlers can transport cargo to and from locations that are not usually reachable by standard forklift models. These devices could also remove palletized cargo from in a trailer and place these loads in high locations, like on rooftops for example. Previously, this situation mentioned above would need a crane. Cranes can be very pricey to utilize and not always a practical or time-efficient alternative.
One more advantage is also the telehandlers biggest drawback: since the boom extends or raises when the machinery 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 center of the load and the front of the wheels.
Once it is fully extended with a low boom angle for example, the telehandler will only have a 400 pound weight capacity, whilst a retracted boom could support weights as much as 5000 lb. The same unit with a 5000 pound 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.
England initially pioneered the telehandler within Horley, Surrey. The Matbro Company developed these machines from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. Initially, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front portion. This placed the cab of the driver on the machine's back portion, as in the Teleram 40 unit. The rigid chassis design with the cab located on the side and a rear mounted boom has since become more famous.