A telescopic handler or telehandler is a machine that is popular in the agriculture and construction businesses. These equipment are similar in appearance and function to a forklift or a lift truck but are really more like a crane rather than 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 can connect lots of attachments on the boom's end. Some of the most common attachments consist of: a muck grab, a bucket, a lift table or pallet forks.
In order to transport loads through locations which are normally unreachable for a conventional forklift. The telehandler utilizes pallet forks as their most common attachment. For example, telehandlers can transport cargo to and from places which are not normally accessible by regular forklift models. These devices can also remove palletized loads from in a trailer and position these loads in high areas, such as on rooftops for example. Before, this aforementioned situation will need a crane. Cranes can be expensive to use and not always a time-efficient or practical alternative.
Telehandler's are unique in that their advantage is also their largest drawback: since the boom extends or raises when the machinery is bearing a load, it also acts as a lever and causes the vehicle to become somewhat unbalanced, even with 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 completely extended with a low boom angle for example, the telehandler will just have a 400 pound weight capacity, whereas a retracted boom could support weights up to 5000 lb. The same model with a 5000 lb. lift capacity which has the boom retracted might be able to easily support as much as 10,000 pounds with the boom raised up to 70.
The Matbro Company within Horley, Surrey, England initially pioneered telehandlers. These equipment were developed from their articulated cross country forestry forklifts. At first, they had a centrally mounted boom design on the front section. This placed the driver's cab on the back portion of the machine, like in the Teleram 40 model. The rigid chassis design with a rear mounted boom and the cab situated on the side has ever since become more popular.