Back in the year 1946, Wally Johnson began to create the markets for the scaffold towers and aerial work platforms all by himself. He accomplished this by establishing a company that was known as UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was a really skilled mechanical engineer who hailed from Berkeley, California. He stumbled upon access machinery when he began looking for a a way to paint his home.
Mr. Johnson found it hard to look for capable scaffolding when he began a house painting project. Existing scaffolding was not able to handle the uneven ground on his property. After being extremely 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 in St. Joseph, Missouri. The company was responsible for introducing an innovative new elevating boom lift to the market. The machinery was produced for firefighting and rescue work. In less than 20 years, the technology had developed into self-propelled boom lifts.
In 1977, Snorkel sold its very first self-propelled lift. 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 industry and achieve global dominance with his scaffold. When he had attained this field, he decided to start all over and invent the world's very first self-propelled aerial lift.
Mr. Johnson in 1972, opened a factory in Selma, where he produced the "Flying Carpet" scissor lift. After this exciting and new machine exploded onto the marketplace, the ground-breaking product soon out-ranked the scaffolding component as the main source of income of the company.
During the year 1980, Wallace Johnson passed away, while the company, UpRight Inc. was sold at that time also. Mr Johnson's pioneering and inventive spirit did continue to live on. In 1994, UpRight introduced the very first micro-scissor within the world. They went on to pioneer the self-propelled mast lift, the TM12.