The telescopic handler or just telehandler is a heavy duty machinery which is well-known in both the construction and agriculture industries. These equipment are quite similar in both appearance and function to the lift truck, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler offers improved versatility of a single telescopic boom which could extend upwards and forwards from the vehicle. The operator can attach numerous attachments on the end of the boom. Some of the most common attachments include: a muck grab, a bucket, a lift table or pallet forks.
In order to move cargo through places that are normally not reachable for a typical forklift. The telehandler utilizes pallet forks as their most common attachment. Like for example, telehandlers could move loads to and from places that are not typically accessible by conventional forklift units. These devices also have the ability to remove palletized cargo from inside a trailer and place these loads in high places, like on rooftops for example. Before, this situation mentioned above will require a crane. Cranes can be expensive to utilize and not always a practical or time-efficient alternative.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their biggest limitation: as 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 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 center of the load and the front of the wheels.
Like for instance, a vehicle that has a 5000 pound capacity with the boom retracted might be able to safely raise 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 which has the boom retracted may be able to easily support as much as 10,000 lb. with the boom raised up to 70.
The Matbro Company in Horley, Surrey, England initially 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 machinery's back part, like 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 and more famous.