A telehandler or a telescopic handler is a machine that is well-known in the construction and agriculture industries. These equipment are similar in appearance and function to a forklift or a lift truck but are really more similar to a crane instead of a forklift. The telehandler offers increased versatility of a single telescopic boom that can extend upwards as well as forwards from the vehicle. The operator could attach many attachments on the end of the boom. Several of the most popular attachments include: a bucket, a muck grab, a lift table or pallet forks.
A telehandler usually utilizes pallet forks as their most popular attachment in order to transport cargo through places that are normally not reachable for a standard forklift. For example, telehandlers can transport cargo to and from locations that are not normally reachable by regular forklift models. These devices can also remove palletized cargo from inside a trailer and place these loads in high locations, such as on rooftops for example. Previously, this aforementioned situation would need a crane. Cranes could be expensive to use and not always a time-efficient or practical alternative.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their biggest drawback: because the boom raises or extends when the equipment is bearing a load, it also acts as a lever and causes the vehicle to become somewhat unbalanced, despite the counterweights on the rear. 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 instance, the telehandler would just have a 400 pound weight capacity, whereas a retracted boom can support weights as much as 5000 lb. The same model with a 5000 lb. lift capacity that has the boom retracted may be able to easily support as much as 10,000 pounds 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 portion. This placed the cab of the driver on the rear portion of the machinery, as in the Teleram 40 unit. The rigid chassis design with the cab situated on the side and a rear mounted boom has ever since become increasingly more popular.