Gorbel designs and manufactures overhead material handling equipment from four North American facilities in New York, Alabama, Arizona, and Canada. Founded in 1977 building manually rotated jib cranes, the company has grown to over 800 employees producing a product line that spans workstation bridge cranes, Cleveland Tramrail systems, ergonomic lifting devices, fall protection systems, and warehouse solutions. The engineering focus combines mechanical design with embedded systems and control software - current implementations use C and C++ on embedded platforms, with Infor SyteLine ERP managing manufacturing operations.
The product portfolio includes intelligent lifting devices such as G-Force and Easy Arm, which incorporate sensors and control algorithms to assist operators with load handling. These systems address the engineering challenges of variable load sensing, dynamic balancing, and human-machine interface design in industrial environments. Gorbel has extended this core lifting technology into medical rehabilitation through the SafeGait Balance and Mobility Trainer, a system designed to support patients recovering from strokes and injuries - demonstrating cross-domain application of the same fundamental control and mechanical principles.
The company's technical work spans mechanical engineering, embedded systems development, and industrial controls. Manufacturing operations across multiple sites support both standard product lines and custom configurations for specific material handling applications. With deployments across industrial manufacturing, warehousing, and healthcare facilities, the engineering team addresses constraints ranging from load capacity and duty cycle requirements to safety compliance and integration with existing facility infrastructure.
