A telescopic handler or telehandler is a machine which is well-known in the agriculture and construction businesses. These machines are similar in appearance and function to a forklift or a lift truck but are really more like a crane instead of a forklift. The telehandler provides increased versatility of a single telescopic boom which could extend upwards as well as forwards from the vehicle. The operator has the ability to connect numerous attachments on the boom's end. Some of the most common attachments include: a muck grab, a bucket, a lift table or pallet forks.
A telehandler usually uses pallet forks as their most popular attachment in order to move loads through places that are usually unreachable for a typical forklift. For instance, telehandlers can transport loads to and from locations which are not normally accessible by conventional forklift models. These devices also have the ability to remove palletized loads from inside a trailer and place these loads in high locations, such as on rooftops for example. Previously, this situation mentioned above would need a crane. Cranes could be expensive to use and not always a time-efficient or practical option.
Another advantage is also the telehandlers largest drawback: since the boom raises or extends when the machinery 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.
When it is fully extended with a low boom angle for example, the telehandler will just have a 400 pound weight capacity, whilst a retracted boom could support weights up to 5000 pounds. The same unit 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 originally pioneered telehandlers. These machinery were developed from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. At first, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front section. This positioned the cab of the driver on the equipment's back portion, as in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with the cab situated on the side and a rear mounted boom has since become more and more popular.