Back in 1946, Wally Johnson started to create the markets for the scaffold towers and aerial work platforms all by himself. He accomplished this by establishing a company that became UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was an extremely gifted mechanical engineer who resided in Berkeley, CA. 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 started a home painting project. Existing scaffolding was not able to handle the uneven terrain on his property. After being very discontented with his choices, he decided to design his own aluminum scaffold tower together with adjustable legs.
In that same year, the Snorkel Company was founded within St. Joseph, Missouri. The company was responsible for introducing a revolutionary new elevating boom lift to the market. The equipment was produced 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 during the year 1977. 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 achieve global domination with his scaffold. When he had attained this field, he decided to start all over and create the world's very 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 machine exploded onto the marketplace, the innovative product soon out-ranked the scaffolding component as the main source of income of the company.
Wallace Johnson passed away in 1980. At that time, the company UpRight Inc. was sold but his inventive and pioneering spirit lived on. In 1994, UpRight launched the first micro-scissor within the world. They went on to pioneer the self-propelled mast lift, the TM12.