Wally Johnson, back during 1946, created the markets for both aerial work platforms and scaffold towers all by himself. He accomplished this by establishing a business which was called UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was an extremely gifted mechanical engineer who lived in Berkeley, CA. He stumbled upon access equipment when he started looking for a a way to paint his house.
When Mr. Johnson was embarking on his house painting project, he had a fruitless search for scaffolding that could handle the uneven ground which surrounded his home. After being extremely unsatisfied with his options, he decided to design his very own aluminum scaffold tower along with adjustable legs.
During that very 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 equipment was made for firefighting and rescue work. In less than 2 decades, the technology had developed into self-propelled boom lifts.
The first self-propelled lift was sold by Snorkel in 1977. This specialized 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 attain worldwide domination with his scaffold. When he had accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and make the first self-propelled aerial lift in the globe.
Mr. Johnson in the year 1972, opened a factory in Selma, where he made the "Flying Carpet" scissor lift. After this new and exciting machinery exploded onto the marketplace, the innovative product soon out-ranked the scaffolding component as the main source of revenue of the company.
Wallace Johnson passed away during the year 1980. At that time, the company UpRight Inc. was sold but his inventive and pioneering spirit lived on. In 1994, UpRight launched the world's very first micro-scissors. They went on to pioneer the TM12, that is the self-propelled mast lift.