The telescopic handler or just telehandler is a heavy duty machinery which is well-known in both the agriculture and construction industries. These equipment are quite similar in both function and appearance to the forklift, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler offers increased versatility of a single telescopic boom that could extend upwards and forwards from the vehicle. The operator has the ability to connect lots of attachments on the end of the boom. Some of the most popular attachments comprise: a bucket, a muck grab, a lift table or pallet forks.
A telehandler normally uses pallet forks as their most popular attachment to be able to move loads through locations that are usually unreachable for a conventional forklift. Like for instance, telehandlers could move cargo to and from areas that are not normally accessible by standard forklift models. These devices also have the ability to remove palletized cargo from within a trailer and position these loads in high places, such as on rooftops for instance. Previously, this situation mentioned above would need a crane. Cranes can be expensive to use and not always a practical or time-efficient alternative.
One more advantage is also the telehandlers largest limitation: because the boom extends or raises when the equipment 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 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 example, the telehandler would just have a 400 pound weight capacity, while a retracted boom can support weights as much as 5000 lb. The same unit with a 5000 pound lift capacity which has the boom retracted may be able to easily support as heavy as 10,000 lb. with the boom raised up to 70.
The Matbro Company within Horley, Surrey, England originally pioneered telehandlers. These machinery were developed from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. Initially, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front section. This placed the cab of the driver on the rear part of the machinery, as in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with the cab situated on the side and a rear mounted boom has ever since become more and more popular.