A telehandler or a telescopic handler is a machinery that is well-known within the agriculture and construction industries. These machines are similar in function and appearance to a lift truck or a forklift but are actually more similar to a crane rather than a forklift. The telehandler offers improved versatility of a single telescopic boom which can extend upwards as well as forwards from the vehicle. The operator has the ability to attach lots of attachments on the boom's end. Some of the most common attachments include: a bucket, a muck grab, a lift table or pallet forks.
To be able to transport cargo through locations that are normally unreachable for a conventional forklift. The telehandler utilizes pallet forks as their most common attachment. Like for example, telehandlers are able to transport loads to and from locations that are not usually accessible by conventional forklift units. These devices can also remove palletized loads from in a trailer and place these loads in high locations, like on rooftops for example. Before, this situation mentioned above would need a crane. Cranes could be pricey to use and not always a time-efficient or practical option.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their largest limitation: 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 quite unbalanced, despite 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 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.
The Matbro Company in Horley, Surrey, England initially pioneered telehandlers. These machinery were developed from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. Initially, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front section. This placed the cab of the driver on the machine's back portion, like 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.