The telehandler or telescopic handler is a heavy duty equipment that is popular within both the construction and agriculture businesses. These machinery are rather similar in both function and appearance to the lift truck, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler offers increased versatility of a single telescopic boom that can extend upwards as well as forwards from the vehicle. The operator can attach numerous attachments on the boom's end. Several of the most popular attachments include: a muck grab, a bucket, pallet forks or a lift table.
To be able to transport cargo through locations which are usually unreachable for a standard forklift. The telehandler utilizes pallet forks as their most common attachment. For example, telehandlers are able to transport loads to and from locations which are not usually reachable by standard forklift models. These devices also have the ability to remove palletized loads from inside a trailer and position these loads in high areas, such as on rooftops for instance. Before, this situation mentioned above will need a crane. Cranes could be really pricey to use and not always a time-efficient or practical choice.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their 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, 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 center of the load and the front of the wheels.
Once it is completely extended with a low boom angle for instance, the telehandler would only have a 400 pound weight capacity, while a retracted boom could support weights up to 5000 pounds. 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 lb. with the boom raised up to 70.
England initially pioneered the telehandler in Horley, Surrey. The Matbro Company developed these machines from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. At first, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front section. This positioned the driver's cab on the machinery's rear portion, as in the Teleram 40 unit. The rigid chassis design with the cab situated on the side and a rear mounted boom has ever since become more famous.