A telehandler or a telescopic handler is a machine which is well-known in the agriculture and construction industries. These machines are similar in appearance and function to a lift truck or a forklift but are actually more like a crane rather than a forklift. The telehandler offers increased versatility of a single telescopic boom that can extend forwards and upwards from the vehicle. The operator can attach different types of attachments on the boom's end. Several of the most common attachments consist of: a bucket, a muck grab, a lift table or pallet forks.
A telehandler usually uses pallet forks as their most popular attachment to be able to move loads through locations which are usually unreachable for a standard forklift. For instance, telehandlers can transport cargo to and from areas that are not normally reachable by regular forklift models. These devices also have the ability to remove palletized cargo from inside a trailer and position these loads in high locations, such as on rooftops for instance. Before, this situation mentioned above will require a crane. Cranes could be really pricey to use and not always a practical or time-efficient alternative.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their biggest limitation: since the boom raises or extends when the machine 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 quickly 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 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 up to 5000 pounds. The same unit with a 5000 pound lift capacity which has the boom retracted might be able to easily support as much as 10,000 lb. with the boom raised up to 70.
England initially pioneered the telehandler within 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 section. This positioned the driver's cab on the equipment'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 since become increasingly more popular.