A telescopic handler or telehandler is a machinery which is well-known within the construction and agriculture industries. These machinery are similar in function and appearance to a forklift or a lift truck but are actually more similar to a crane rather than a forklift. The telehandler offers improved versatility of a single telescopic boom that could extend upwards as well as forwards from the vehicle. The operator has the ability to connect many attachments on the boom's end. Some of the most popular attachments comprise: a bucket, a muck grab, a lift table or pallet forks.
A telehandler usually uses pallet forks as their most common attachment to be able to transport loads through locations which are usually unreachable for a conventional forklift. Like for instance, telehandlers are able to transport loads to and from areas which are not normally reachable by standard forklift units. These devices can also remove palletized loads from inside a trailer and position these loads in high locations, like on rooftops for instance. Before, this abovementioned situation will need a crane. Cranes can be very expensive to utilize and not always a time-efficient or practical alternative.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their biggest limitation: since the boom raises or extends when the machine is bearing a load, it also acts as a lever and causes the vehicle to become somewhat unbalanced, despite the counterweights on the back. This translates to the lifting capacity decreasing quickly as the working radius increases. The working radius is the distance between the front of the wheels and the center of the load.
Once it is completely extended with a low boom angle for instance, the telehandler would just have a 400 pound weight capacity, while a retracted boom can support weights as much as 5000 pounds. The same model with a 5000 lb. lift capacity which has the boom retracted might be able to easily support as much as 10,000 lb. with the boom raised up to 70.
England first 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 driver's cab on the equipment's rear portion, like 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 famous.