Many roll handling solutions exist to lift and rotate rolls onto winders and unwind shafts, but options become limited when space gets tight. This lift is ideal for legacy processes or cramped facilities when the narrow aisles in front of equipment are not much wider than the rolls themselves. This lift includes an expanding mandrel core gripper with an elongated core shaft and embedded rollers. With this lift, one operator can pick up a roll from by its core, rotate it 90°, and unload it onto a cantilevered mandrel.