The telehandler or telescopic handler is a heavy duty equipment which is popular within both the agriculture and construction businesses. These machines are quite similar in both appearance and function to the forklift, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler provides increased versatility of a single telescopic boom which can extend forwards as well as upwards from the vehicle. The operator could attach different kinds 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.
In order to move cargo through places that are usually not reachable for a typical forklift. The telehandler utilizes pallet forks as their most popular attachment. Like for example, telehandlers could move cargo to and from areas that are not usually accessible by regular forklift models. These devices could also remove palletized cargo from within a trailer and place these loads in high locations, such as on rooftops for instance. Before, this situation mentioned above will need a crane. Cranes could be pricey to utilize and not always a time-efficient or practical option.
One more advantage is also the telehandlers largest 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 unbalanced, 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 front of the wheels and the center of the load.
When it is fully extended with a low boom angle for example, the telehandler will just have a 400 pound weight capacity, whereas a retracted boom can support weights up to 5000 lb. The same model 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 in Horley, Surrey, England first 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 cab of the driver on the equipment's back portion, 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 increasingly more famous.