The telehandler or telescopic handler is a heavy duty equipment which is well-known in both the construction and agriculture industries. These machines are rather similar in both function and appearance to the lift truck, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler offers improved versatility of a single telescopic boom that could extend upwards and forwards from the vehicle. The operator has the ability to attach lots of attachments on the boom's end. Some of the most popular attachments include: a muck grab, a bucket, pallet forks or a lift table.
In order to transport loads through areas which are usually unreachable for a typical forklift. The telehandler uses pallet forks as their most common attachment. For instance, telehandlers are able to transport loads to and from places which are not normally accessible by regular forklift models. These devices can also remove palletized cargo from within a trailer and place these loads in high areas, like on rooftops for example. Before, this situation mentioned above will require a crane. Cranes could be pricey to utilize and not always a practical or time-efficient option.
One more advantage is also the telehandlers biggest limitation: because the boom raises or extends when the machinery is bearing a load, it also acts as a lever and causes the vehicle to become quite unbalanced, even with the rear counterweights. This translates to the lifting capacity decreasing quickly 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 fully extended with a low boom angle for instance, the telehandler would just have a 400 pound weight capacity, whilst a retracted boom can support weights up to 5000 pounds. The same model 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 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 portion. This placed the driver's cab on the back part of the machine, like in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with a rear mounted boom and the cab situated on the side has since become more famous.