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The inventor of the cherry picker dies

Telsta Corp founder Jay Eitel died on June 10 at the age of 94. Eitel was widely considered to be the mind behind the original cherry pickers work platform. He went on to found Telsta Corporation, developing and producing a variety of powered access machines, including tail lifts and other truck-mounted aerial work platforms.

Eitel came up with the vision of the cherry picker after finding a need for a more effective method of picking fruit. As a young man, he himself had worked as a manual fruit picker, using only a ladder, and in 1944 the design for a truck-mounted telescopic bucket elevator was born.

The original design of the cherry picker included a bucket deck mounted on an extendable steel boom. This structure was mounted on a truck and controlled by a single lever. This principle is maintained in modern cherry pickers and telescopic and articulated platforms.

The benefits of boom lifts include a wide range of motion: While a scissor lift’s platform can only move vertically, a boom lift can move both laterally and vertically, and even extend up and over obstacles if the arm it is articulated

Shortly after its invention, Eitel founded the Telsta Corporation, which went on to design powered access equipment that would be used by many large companies in many different applications, for example, the Bell Telephone Company, PG&E, arborists, and street lighting services. Telsta became part of General Cable, which was later incorporated into the American Financial Corporation. This company later became Mobile Tool International and Telstra products are produced by Altec Industries Inc.

During his lifetime, Eitel patented a further 65 designs, including the “Lamplight Lift”, which was unique in that it allowed operators to move from the driver’s seat directly onto the work platform.

Eitel later used his passion for engineering to build hot rods, and was repeatedly hired as a consultant on automotive development and manufacturing issues in South Korea during the 1980s. Today, his legacy lives on in the popular aerial work platforms with boom lift and cherry picker.

Boom lifts are suitable for a variety of applications, from small, compact machines to huge truck-mounted platforms. Cherry pickers have working heights ranging from 9 meters to approximately 30 meters. This type of tail lift can have either a telescoping or an articulating boom, providing the widest possible range of motion for an AWP.

Cherry pickers and booms are used in many industries including construction, aviation, railroads, factories, manufacturing, warehouses, facility management, events, maintenance, repair, and even firefighting. fires.