The telehandler or telescopic handler is a heavy duty equipment that is popular in both the agriculture and construction industries. These machines are quite 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 which could extend forwards as well as upwards from the vehicle. The operator can connect lots of 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 uses pallet forks as their most common attachment to be able to move loads through places which are usually not reachable for a typical forklift. Like for example, telehandlers are able to move loads to and from areas that are not normally reachable by conventional forklift units. These devices could also remove palletized cargo from in a trailer and position these loads in high places, such as on rooftops for instance. Previously, this situation mentioned above would require a crane. Cranes could be very expensive to use and not always a time-efficient or practical choice.
One more advantage is also the telehandlers biggest limitation: because the boom extends or raises when the machinery is bearing a load, it also acts as a lever and causes the vehicle to become quite unbalanced, 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 front of the wheels and the center of the load.
For example, a vehicle which has a 5000 lb. capacity with the boom retracted might be able to safely lift only as heavy as 400 lb. when it is completely extended with a low boom angle. The same model with a 5000 pound lift capacity that has the boom retracted might be able to easily support as heavy as 10,000 pounds with the boom raised up to 70.
England initially pioneered the telehandler in Horley, Surrey. The Matbro Company developed these equipment from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. At first, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front section. This positioned the driver's cab on the back part of the machine, like in the Teleram 40 unit. The rigid chassis design with the cab located on the side and a rear mounted boom has since become more popular.