A telescopic handler or telehandler is a machinery that is well-known within the agriculture and construction businesses. These machines are similar in function and appearance to a forklift or a lift truck but are really more similar to a crane rather than a forklift. The telehandler provides improved versatility of a single telescopic boom which can extend forwards as well as upwards from the vehicle. The operator has the ability to connect a lot of attachments on the end of the boom. Some of the most common attachments comprise: a bucket, a muck grab, pallet forks or a lift table.
A telehandler usually uses pallet forks as their most common attachment in order to move cargo through places that are normally not reachable for a typical forklift. Like for instance, telehandlers could transport loads to and from locations which are not normally reachable by standard forklift models. 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 will need a crane. Cranes could be pricey to use and not always a practical or time-efficient option.
Another advantage is also the telehandlers largest drawback: because 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 unbalanced, despite the counterweights on the rear. 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.
When it is fully extended with a low boom angle for example, the telehandler will only have a 400 pound weight capacity, whilst a retracted boom could support weights as much as 5000 lb. The same model with a 5000 pound lift capacity that 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 in Horley, Surrey, England first pioneered telehandlers. These machinery were developed from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. Initially, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front portion. 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 ever since become more popular.