The telehandler or telescopic handler is a heavy duty equipment which is popular within both the agriculture and construction industries. These machines are rather 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 has the ability to connect many attachments on the boom's end. Some of the most popular attachments comprise: a muck grab, a bucket, pallet forks or a lift table.
A telehandler typically utilizes pallet forks as their most popular attachment to be able to transport cargo through locations which are normally not reachable for a typical forklift. For instance, telehandlers can move cargo to and from places that are not normally reachable by standard forklift models. These devices also have the ability to remove palletized loads from in a trailer and position these loads in high places, such as on rooftops for instance. Previously, this situation mentioned above will require a crane. Cranes could be really expensive to utilize and not always a practical or time-efficient option.
One more advantage is also the telehandlers largest 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 somewhat unstable, even with the rear counterweights. 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 fully 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 pounds. The same model with a 5000 pound lift capacity which has the boom retracted might be able to easily support as heavy as 10,000 lb. with the boom raised up to 70.
England first pioneered the telehandler in Horley, Surrey. The Matbro Company developed these equipment from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. Initially, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front section. This placed the driver's cab on the machine's back part, like in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with a rear mounted boom and the cab located on the side has since become more popular.