Wally Johnson, back during the year 1946, created the markets for both aerial work platforms and scaffold towers all by himself. He accomplished this by starting a company that became UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was an extremely skilled mechanical engineer who hailed from Berkeley, California. He stumbled upon access machinery when he began searching for a solution to painting his house.
While Mr. Johnson was embarking on his house painting project, he had a fruitless search for scaffolding that could handle the uneven ground that surrounded his home. After being extremely unsatisfied with his choices, he decided to design his own aluminum scaffold tower together with adjustable legs.
During that same year, the Snorkel Company was founded in St. Joseph, Missouri. The company was responsible for introducing a revolutionary 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.
During the year 1977, Snorkel sold its first self-propelled lift. 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 attain worldwide domination with his scaffold. Once he had attained this field, he decided to start all over and invent the world's first self-propelled aerial lift.
In 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 company`s main source of income.
Wallace Johnson passed away in 1980. At that time, the company UpRight Inc. was sold but his inventive and pioneering spirit lived on. During 1994, UpRight introduced the first micro-scissor in the globe. They went on to pioneer the self-propelled mast lift, the TM12.