The telehandler or telescopic handler is a heavy duty equipment which is well-known in both the construction and agriculture businesses. These machinery are quite similar in both appearance and function to the lift truck, except it more closely resembles a crane. The telehandler provides increased versatility of a single telescopic boom which could extend upwards and forwards from the vehicle. The operator can connect lots of attachments on the end of the boom. Some of the most common attachments consist of: a bucket, a muck grab, a lift table or pallet forks.
To be able to transport cargo through locations that are normally not reachable for a typical forklift. The telehandler utilizes pallet forks as their most popular attachment. For instance, telehandlers could move cargo to and from areas which are not normally reachable by conventional forklift units. These devices can also remove palletized cargo from inside a trailer and place these loads in high locations, like on rooftops for instance. Previously, this situation mentioned above would 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 raises or extends 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 quickly as the working radius increases. The working radius is the distance between the center of the load and the front of the wheels.
Like for example, a vehicle that has a 5000 pound capacity with the boom retracted may be able to safely lift only as heavy as 400 lb. once it is fully extended with a low boom angle. The same unit with a 5000 lb. lift capacity that 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 in Horley, Surrey, England first pioneered telehandlers. These machines 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 machinery's back part, as in the Teleram 40 unit. The rigid chassis design with a rear mounted boom and the cab located on the side has ever since become increasingly more popular.