A telescopic handler or telehandler is a machinery which is popular in the agriculture and construction industries. These machinery are similar in function and appearance to a lift truck or a forklift but are actually more like 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 attach a lot of attachments on the boom's end. Some of the most popular attachments comprise: a bucket, a muck grab, pallet forks or a lift table.
To be able to transport cargo through areas which are normally unreachable for a conventional forklift. The telehandler uses pallet forks as their most common attachment. For example, telehandlers could move cargo to and from places which are not normally accessible by standard forklift models. These devices could also remove palletized loads from in a trailer and position these loads in high areas, like on rooftops for instance. Previously, this situation mentioned above would require a crane. Cranes can be expensive to use and not always a practical or time-efficient alternative.
Another advantage is also the telehandlers biggest drawback: since the boom extends or raises when the machine is bearing a load, it also acts as a lever and causes the vehicle to become somewhat unstable, even with the counterweights on the rear. This translates to the lifting capacity decreasing fast 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 example, the telehandler will only have a 400 pound weight capacity, whereas 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 might 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 equipment were developed from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. Initially, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front portion. This placed the cab of the driver on the machine's back portion, as in the Teleram 40 unit. The rigid chassis design with the cab located on the side and a rear mounted boom has ever since become more popular.