Back during the year 1946, Wally Johnson began to create the markets for the 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 gifted mechanical engineer who lived in Berkeley, CA. He stumbled upon access machinery when he began looking for a a way to paint his house.
While Mr. Johnson was embarking on his home painting project, he had a fruitless search for scaffolding that could deal with the uneven terrain which surrounded his home. After being very unsatisfied with his choices, he decided to design his own aluminum scaffold tower complete with adjustable legs.
During 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 equipment was made for firefighting and rescue work. In less than 2 decades, the technology had developed into self-propelled boom lifts.
During the year 1977, Snorkel sold its very 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 industry and achieve global dominance with his scaffold. Once he had accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and create the world's very first self-propelled aerial lift.
During 1972, Mr. Johnson opened a new factory in Selma. There he made the "Flying Carpet" scissor lift. After this new and exciting machine exploded onto the marketplace, the ground-breaking product soon out-ranked the scaffolding component as the company`s main source of revenue.
In 1980, Wallace Johnson passed away, while the company, UpRight Inc. was sold at that time also. Mr Johnson's inventive and pioneering spirit did continue to live on. During the year 1994, UpRight introduced the world's very first micro-scissors. They went on to pioneer the TM12, which is the self-propelled mast lift.