A telescopic handler or telehandler is a machinery that is popular in the agriculture and construction industries. These machines 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 improved versatility of a single telescopic boom that can extend forwards as well as upwards from the vehicle. The operator could attach lots of attachments on the boom's end. Some of the most common attachments include: a bucket, a muck grab, pallet forks or a lift table.
A telehandler typically utilizes pallet forks as their most popular attachment to be able to move loads through places which are normally not reachable for a standard forklift. For example, telehandlers can move loads to and from places which are not normally reachable by standard forklift units. These devices could also remove palletized cargo from within a trailer and place these loads in high locations, such as on rooftops for instance. Before, this aforementioned situation would need a crane. Cranes could be pricey to use and not always a practical or time-efficient alternative.
One more advantage is also the telehandlers biggest limitation: 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 quite unstable, despite the rear counterweights. This translates to the lifting capacity decreasing fast as the working radius increases. The working radius is the distance between the center of the load and the front of the wheels.
When it is fully extended with a low boom angle for instance, the telehandler will only have a 400 pound weight capacity, while a retracted boom could support weights as much as 5000 pounds. The same unit with a 5000 lb. lift capacity that has the boom retracted may be able to easily support as much as 10,000 lb. with the boom raised up to 70.
England originally pioneered the telehandler in Horley, Surrey. The Matbro Company developed these machinery 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 part of the equipment, like in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with a rear mounted boom and the cab located on the side has ever since become increasingly more popular.