Back in the year 1946, Wally Johnson began to create the markets for the aerial work platforms and scaffold towers all by himself. He attained this by starting a business that became UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was a really skilled mechanical engineer who hailed from Berkeley, CA. He stumbled upon access machinery 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 could deal with the uneven ground that surrounded his house. After being very discontented with his options, he decided to design his own aluminum scaffold tower complete with adjustable legs.
During that very 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 machine was made for rescue and firefighting 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.
Wallace Johnson quickly catapulted to the top of the industry with his new scaffold. When he had attained this field, he decided to start all over and make the world's first self-propelled aerial lift.
In 1972, Mr. Johnson opened a new factory in Selma. There he produced the "Flying Carpet" scissor lift. After this new and exciting machinery exploded onto the marketplace, the ground-breaking product soon out-ranked the scaffolding component as the company`s main source of income.
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. During 1994, UpRight introduced the world's first micro-scissors. They went on to pioneer the TM12, which is the self-propelled mast lift.