Back during the year 1946, Wally Johnson began to create the markets for both the scaffold towers and aerial work platforms all by himself. He accomplished this by starting a company which became UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was a very skilled mechanical engineer who hailed from Berkeley, California. He stumbled upon access equipment when he began looking for a solution to painting his home.
When Mr. Johnson was embarking on his home painting project, he had a fruitless search for scaffolding that can deal with the uneven terrain that surrounded his house. After being really unsatisfied with his choices, he decided to design his own aluminum scaffold tower together with adjustable legs.
The Snorkel Company was also founded the same year within St. Joseph, Missouri. This small company helped to transform the new elevating boom lift. The machinery was made for firefighting and rescue work. In less than twenty years, the technology had developed into self-propelled boom lifts.
The first self-propelled lift was sold by Snorkel during 1977. This particular product line did not take long to become the company's main business.
It did not take long for Wallace Johnson to catapult to the top of the business and achieve worldwide domination with his scaffold. When he had accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and make the very first self-propelled aerial lift in the globe.
Mr. Johnson during the year 1972, opened a factory in Selma, where he created the "Flying Carpet" scissor lift. After this new and exciting equipment exploded onto the marketplace, the innovative 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. In the year 1994, UpRight introduced the world's very first micro-scissors. They went on to pioneer the self-propelled mast lift, the TM12.