The telehandler or telescopic handler is a heavy duty equipment which is well-known within both the agriculture and construction businesses. These equipment 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 that could extend upwards as well as forwards from the vehicle. The operator could attach lots of attachments on the end of the boom. Some of the most common attachments consist of: a bucket, a muck grab, a lift table or pallet forks.
A telehandler typically uses pallet forks as their most common attachment in order to move loads through places that are usually not reachable for a standard forklift. For example, telehandlers can transport cargo to and from locations which are not typically accessible by regular forklift units. These devices also have the ability to remove palletized loads from in a trailer and place these loads in high locations, such as on rooftops for instance. Before, this abovementioned situation will need a crane. Cranes could be really expensive to utilize and not always a practical or time-efficient alternative.
Another advantage is also the telehandlers biggest drawback: because the boom raises or extends when the machine 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 fast as the working radius increases. The working radius is the distance between the front of the wheels and the center of the load.
Like for example, a vehicle that has a 5000 lb. capacity with the boom retracted may be able to safely lift only as heavy as 400 lb. once it is fully extended with a low boom angle. The same model with a 5000 lb. lift capacity that has the boom retracted might be able to easily support as heavy as 10,000 pounds with the boom raised up to 70.
England originally pioneered the telehandler within Horley, Surrey. The Matbro Company developed these machinery 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 rear portion of the machinery, 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 more popular.