Wally Johnson, back in the year 1946, created the markets for both aerial work platforms and scaffold towers all by himself. He accomplished this by establishing a company that was referred to as UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was a very gifted mechanical engineer who hailed from Berkeley, CA. He stumbled upon access equipment when he started looking for a solution to painting his house.
While Mr. Johnson was embarking on his house painting project, he had a fruitless search for scaffolding which can handle the uneven ground which surrounded his home. After being very discontented with his choices, he decided to design his very own aluminum scaffold tower along with adjustable legs.
During that same year, the Snorkel Company was established in St. Joseph, Missouri. The company was responsible for introducing an innovative new elevating boom lift to the market. The machinery was made for rescue and firefighting work. In less than 20 years, the technology had developed into self-propelled boom lifts.
The very first self-propelled lift was sold by Snorkel in the year 1977. This specialized product line did not take long to become the main business for the company.
It did not take long for Wallace Johnson to catapult to the top of the industry and attain global domination with his scaffold. When he had accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and invent the world's first self-propelled aerial lift.
During the year 1972, Mr. Johnson opened a new factory in Selma. There he made the "Flying Carpet" scissor lift. After this new and exciting machine exploded onto the marketplace, the ground-breaking product soon out-ranked the scaffolding component as the company`s main source of revenue.
Wallace Johnson passed away in the year 1980. At that time, the company UpRight Inc. was sold but his inventive and pioneering spirit lived on. During the year 1994, UpRight launched the first micro-scissor within the globe. They went on to pioneer the self-propelled mast lift, the TM12.