What Are Telescopic Conveyor Systems?

Telescopic conveyors are flexible transport systems designed especially for loading and unloading trucks, lorries and containers, able to extend and retract back and forth thanks to their nesting modules. Under an operator's control they reach all the way to the deepest (tail) point of the vehicle, building a continuous, mobile bridge between the facility's fixed transport lines and logistics vehicles.

What Are the Key Advantages?

The greatest advantage of these systems is that they dramatically shorten loading and unloading times. By reducing the distance staff have to carry heavy cartons by hand and walk to zero, they create an extremely ergonomic working environment, minimizing occupational health risks such as back, lower-back and joint disorders and reducing fatigue. In addition, because they retract into a closed position when not in use, they take up minimal space on loading docks and save floor space.

In Which Sectors and Applications Is It Used?

They sit at the heart of any operation where hundreds or thousands of packages are loaded onto vehicles each day, or where goods are received from vehicles. Parcel and postal transfer centers, e-commerce logistics warehouses, 3PL (third-party logistics) distribution centers, and the dispatch docks of large factories producing white goods, electronics and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) are where they are most heavily used.

What Should You Consider When Investing?

When selecting a system, the correct retracted length and extension capacity (reach) should be determined based on the structure of the operational docks and the depth of the vehicles in the fleet (for example 20ft or 40ft container sizes). The maximum package weight to be carried should be calculated, and a hydraulic height-adjustment (raise/lower) feature should be considered to adapt to different vehicle heights. Safety add-ons such as system mobility (fixed, wheeled or rail-mounted), anti-collision sensors that ensure operator safety, emergency-stop bars and LED units that illuminate the inside of the vehicle must definitely be taken into account.

Why ACS Intralogistics Solutions?

As ACS Intralogistics Solutions, we engineer high-performance telescopic conveyor systems that eliminate bottlenecks at your loading and unloading docks and withstand demanding 24/7 shifts.

We do not merely install the system as a standard extending belt; with handheld terminals, barcode readers, dimensioning systems and counting sensors integrated at its tip, we turn it into a smart terminal that records the process at the entry/exit point. By making your telescopic conveyors communicate flawlessly with your internal sorter lines, barcode tunnels and warehouse management system (WMS), we fully automate the entire intralogistics process end to end, from the moment the product is taken off the vehicle until it is brought into the operation.