Wally Johnson, back during 1946, created the markets for both scaffold towers and aerial work platforms all by himself. He accomplished this by establishing a company which was called UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was an extremely gifted mechanical engineer who resided in Berkeley, California. He stumbled upon access equipment when he started looking for a a way to paint his house.
While Mr. Johnson was embarking on his house painting project, he had a fruitless search for scaffolding which can handle the uneven terrain that surrounded his house. After being really unsatisfied with his choices, he decided to design his very own aluminum scaffold tower along with adjustable legs.
In that same year, the Snorkel Company was founded within 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 2 decades, the technology had developed into self-propelled boom lifts.
In 1977, Snorkel sold its very first self-propelled lift. 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 business and attain global domination with his scaffold. Once he had accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and invent the world's very 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 exciting and new equipment exploded onto the marketplace, the innovative product soon out-ranked the scaffolding component as the main source of income of the company.
During 1980, Wallace Johnson passed away, while the company, UpRight Inc. was sold at that time as well. Mr Johnson's inventive and pioneering spirit did continue to live on. During the year 1994, UpRight launched the very first micro-scissor in the globe. They went on to pioneer the self-propelled mast lift, the TM12.