Which Gehl Articulated Loader Size Do You Need?

Buyer's Guide · 2026-08-19

An articulated loader bends in the middle instead of skidding its tires around, which is why it's kind to turf, gravel and barn floors. If you want the full case for one against a skid steer, read articulated loader vs skid steer.

This page answers the next question: once you've decided you want one, which size do you buy?

We carry four Gehl AL and ALT articulated loaders. Here's how to place yourself on the ladder.

Start with the three numbers that actually decide it

Everything else is detail. Three specs sort these machines:

• Lift height - how high the arms put a load. This is the one that eliminates machines fastest, because if it won't reach, nothing else matters.
• Engine power - how hard it works a bucket through a pile, and how well it holds speed on a grade with a load up.
• Outer turning radius - whether it fits down your alley and turns around inside your barn. Ask us for the figure on the model you're considering.

Capacity matters too, but on these machines it tracks closely with power, so if you get the power right the capacity usually follows.

The ladder, compact to flagship

Gehl AL650 - the compact. 64.4 hp, 10 ft 3 in maximum lifting height below the forks. This is the tight-spaces machine. Horse barns, nurseries, landscape crews working residential lots, anywhere the constraint is the doorway rather than the pile. It's the easiest one in the lineup to put on a trailer, and the one most likely to fit where you need it.

Gehl AL750 - the step up. 74.3 hp, 10 ft 9 in maximum lifting height below the forks. Roughly the same footprint story as the AL650 with more muscle behind the bucket. Buy this one if you're loading material all day rather than moving the occasional pallet, or if you found yourself wishing the compact would push harder into a pile.

Gehl ALT750 - the telescopic. 74.3 hp, 15 ft 11 in maximum lifting height below the forks. Same engine class as the AL750, but the boom telescopes instead of pivoting on a fixed arm, so it puts loads meaningfully higher and further out than either of the two above. Buy it when the job is stacking or loading trucks and the fixed-arm machines come up short on height. You give up a little breakout force and a little agility for the reach, and it's a longer machine, so give it more room to swing.

Gehl ALT950 - the flagship. 143 hp, 17 ft 1 in maximum lifting height below the forks. Nearly double the power of the compact and the most reach in the lineup. This is the machine for high stacking, heavy loading, and operations where the loader runs most of the day. It's also the biggest, so check your turning radius against your tightest space before you commit.

Sizing by what you actually do

Barns, stalls and livestock. AL650, almost always. The doorways and the alleys decide it, not the load. The extra power on the AL750 doesn't help if the machine can't turn around inside the building.

Landscaping and nursery work. AL650 or AL750, and the split is about volume. Crews moving a few yards of material and setting pallets are fine on the compact. Crews loading trucks all day want the AL750.

Loading and stacking. ALT750 or ALT950. If you're putting material up onto a truck, onto racks, or onto a pile taller than about ten feet, the fixed-arm machines will frustrate you and the telescopic ones won't. Choose between them on weight and how much of the day the machine runs.

Municipal, park and mixed-duty work. Usually AL750. It's the middle of the ladder for a reason - enough power for real work, still small enough to be sensible on finished ground.

Big operations where the loader is the main machine. ALT950. When it runs eight hours a day the power and reach stop being luxuries.

Two things that catch people out

Turning radius, not overall width. Almost everyone measures the doorway and forgets the turn. An articulated loader sweeps through a wider arc than its body width suggests. If you're buying for a specific building, measure the tightest turn you'll actually make and check it against the outer turning radius, not the machine's width.

Attachments cross the whole lineup. Gehl uses a standard skid steer interface on these, so buckets, forks, grapples and bale spears carry over between sizes and often from a skid steer you already own. That means stepping up a size doesn't obsolete your attachments, and it means you shouldn't size the machine around an attachment you'd have to replace anyway.

Not sure? Tell us the job

The honest answer is that the right size depends on your tightest space and your heaviest lift, and those are two numbers we can't guess from here. Tell us what you move, how high it has to go, and what your worst doorway looks like, and we'll point you at one machine instead of four.

Browse the full articulated loader lineup to compare side by side, or run through find your machine and we'll take it from there.

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