Back during the year 1946, Wally Johnson began to create the markets for both the aerial work platforms and scaffold towers all by himself. He accomplished this by starting a business which was called UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was an extremely gifted mechanical engineer who hailed from Berkeley, California. He stumbled upon access equipment when he began searching for a solution to painting his home.
Mr. Johnson found it hard to look for capable scaffolding when he began a home painting project. Existing scaffolding was not able to deal with the uneven ground on his land. After being very unsatisfied with his options, he decided to design his own aluminum scaffold tower along with adjustable legs.
In that very same year, the Snorkel Company was founded in St. Joseph, Missouri. The company was responsible for introducing an innovative new elevating boom lift to the market. The machine was made for rescue and firefighting 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 the year 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 global domination with his scaffold. After he had attained this field, he decided to start all over and create the world's very first self-propelled aerial lift.
In the year 1972, Mr. Johnson opened a new factory in Selma. There he created the "Flying Carpet" scissor lift. After this new and exciting machine exploded onto the marketplace, the innovative product soon out-ranked the scaffolding component as the company`s main source of income.
In 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 world's very first micro-scissors. They went on to pioneer the self-propelled mast lift, the TM12.