The telehandler or telescopic handler is a heavy duty machine which is popular within both the construction and agriculture industries. These equipment are quite similar in both appearance and function to the forklift, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler provides improved versatility of a single telescopic boom that could extend upwards as well as forwards from the vehicle. The operator has the ability to attach numerous attachments on the end of the boom. Several of the most common attachments include: a bucket, a muck grab, a lift table or pallet forks.
In order to transport cargo through places that are usually unreachable for a typical forklift. The telehandler uses pallet forks as their most popular attachment. For instance, telehandlers could move cargo to and from areas that are not usually accessible by standard forklift models. These devices also have the ability to remove palletized cargo from inside a trailer and position these loads in high areas, such as on rooftops for example. Before, this aforementioned situation would require a crane. Cranes could be very expensive to use and not always a practical or time-efficient alternative.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their biggest drawback: 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 somewhat unbalanced, even with 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 instance, the telehandler will only have a 400 pound weight capacity, whereas a retracted boom could support weights as much as 5000 pounds. The same unit with a 5000 lb. lift capacity which has the boom retracted might be able to easily support as heavy as 10,000 lb. with the boom raised up to 70.
England first pioneered the telehandler within 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 machine's rear part, as in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with the cab located on the side and a rear mounted boom has since become increasingly more famous.