Written by Brad Allen, Vice President – Engineering, Product Management & Marketing
Marking half a century of serving aerial markets around the world, Genie is celebrating our five-decade legacy of “Building the Future” through industry leadership and innovation this year. Since 1966, Genie has been working to develop products that solve your worksite challenges — and that process never ends. Our team of product managers and engineers is constantly using your input to design new products, featuring the latest technology to meet changing needs. Then, we manufacture those products to stringent standards that help increase quality, lower costs and give you exceptional value for years to come.
In the last 50 years, Genie has gone above and beyond in its product development efforts, focusing on what you need to be successful in your industries and applications — and, Genie innovations are changing the market, setting the industry standard for quality, reliability and safety in aerial lift equipment.
Over the last five decades, we have become known for developing innovative products that the market has never seen before, including:
- AWP Lifts: Genie pioneered the first hydraulic material lifts, featuring a unique interlocking mast design. These AWP push-arounds quickly became an industry favorite, thanks to their ground entry for operators and portability on jobsites.
- Z™-Boom Lift Category: Genie introduced the articulating Z-boom in 1985 with the Z-30/20 model; a product that launched the company into the rental segment. These lifts gained incredible popularity due to their unique “up-and-over” capabilities to navigate obstacles at height.
- Compact Telehandlers: The Telelift 2306 telehandler was introduced in 1998 for the agricultural market to operate in animal stables with limited-dimension doorways but with enough capacity to pick-and-carry a variety of materials. Compact telehandlers popularity quickly grew beyond agricultural uses thanks to these machines’ high productivity and performance, maneuverability and easy operation. Today, the innovative Telelift 2306 is known as the Genie GTH™-5519 telehandler.
- 40-ft Scissors: Genie offers the most full-drive height models in the industry, including the GS™-4047 model which allowed the brand to enter into a whole new class category globally. Operators can safely position and reposition a Genie scissor lift fully extended, saving time on the job.
- Genie 011315_-15SX-180 Boom Lift: The brand’s highest reaching self-propelled boom, built to safely and quickly lift operators. Genie was the first to market with the world’s tallest boom. Its compact, lightweight design makes it easy for customers to transport to and use on jobsites.
- X-Chassis: This expanding axle design revolutionizes the mechanism for extending and retracting the axles on Genie booms to and from the stowed position. The Genie X-Chassis feature combines outstanding stability with the flexibility for easy transport.
- Active Oscillating Axles: This feature allows operators using Genie booms to safely maintain contact with the ground on uneven and undulating surfaces, enabling the unit to retain maximum power and torque.
Genie also has set new standards in the industry for many products and technologies that have become widely adopted in the last 50 years, including dual parallelogram, rotating, fully articulating and extending jibs, true crab steering and the TraX™ track drive system.
- Z40-Boom COBThe dual parallelogram lift linkage allows Genie Z-boom operators to vertically track walls by simply raising or lowering the secondary boom without needing to re-position the machine.
- The market’s first rotating jib was pioneered on the Genie Z-20 boom lift. This feature is still used on several Genie products today.
- Fully articulating jibs were first introduced on early Genie S™-60 telescopic boom models. Before the advent of this feature, jibs were only able to be articulated parallel with the main boom. With the fully articulating feature, operators are able to articulate the jib above the boom and get in, up and behind objects quickly and easy.
- True crab steering was first developed for the Genie S™-125 telescopic boom to eliminate hydraulically or mechanically linking the left and right tires with only Ackerman steering geometry. By independently driving each tire, operators can (thru the use of angle sensors) do Ackerman steering geometry, steer all the tires the same angle one direction (crab steering) and do four-wheel steering.
- Genie was the first to bring the four-point TraX track drive system to the industry as a way to provide increased terrainability and lower contact pressure for reduced damage to sensitive ground surfaces on aerial products such as the company’s Z- and S-booms.
As you can see, we’ve been busy these last 50 years. And, we have no plans to slow down our progress. We’ve got brand-new ideas being thought of today that we’ll be turning into reality within the next two years. We never stop moving forward — we keep taking our customers’ and their businesses higher. In the next 50 years, we’ll continue to reach new heights, fit into new classifications and categories and help our customers make more money. Stay tuned!
Stay up to date on the Genie 50th Anniversary at
www.genielift.com/50th
