A telescopic handler or telehandler is a machinery that is well-known within the construction and agriculture industries. These equipment are similar in appearance and function to a lift truck or a forklift but are actually more similar to a crane rather than a forklift. The telehandler provides increased versatility of a single telescopic boom that can extend forwards and upwards from the vehicle. The operator can connect many attachments on the boom's end. Some of the most common attachments consist of: a bucket, a muck grab, pallet forks or a lift table.
In order to transport cargo through areas that are usually unreachable for a typical forklift. The telehandler utilizes pallet forks as their most popular attachment. For example, telehandlers are able to move cargo to and from locations that are not usually accessible by regular forklift units. These devices can also remove palletized loads from in a trailer and place these loads in high locations, like on rooftops for instance. Before, this situation mentioned above would need a crane. Cranes can be really pricey to utilize and not always a time-efficient or practical choice.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their largest limitation: as the boom extends or raises when the machinery is bearing a load, it also acts as a lever and causes the vehicle to become somewhat unstable, despite 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.
Like for example, a vehicle which has a 5000 lb. capacity with the boom retracted may be able to safely lift just as much as 400 pounds when it is completely extended with a low boom angle. The same model with a 5000 pound 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.
England first pioneered the telehandler in 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 section. This placed the cab of the driver on the equipment's back part, as in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with the cab located on the side and a rear mounted boom has ever since become more famous.