Back during the year 1946, Wally Johnson started to create the markets for the scaffold towers and aerial work platforms all by himself. He accomplished this by starting a company that was known as UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was an extremely skilled mechanical engineer who lived in Berkeley, CA. He stumbled upon access equipment when he began looking for a solution to painting his house.
While Mr. Johnson was embarking on his home painting project, he had a fruitless search for scaffolding which could handle the uneven ground which surrounded his home. After being extremely unsatisfied with his choices, he decided to design his own aluminum scaffold tower together with adjustable legs.
The Snorkel Company was also founded the same year in St. Joseph, Missouri. This small company helped to revolutionize the new elevating boom lift. The machinery was made for rescue and firefighting work. In less than twenty 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 main business for the company.
It did not take long for Wallace Johnson to catapult to the top of the industry and attain global dominance with his scaffold. After he had accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and make the first self-propelled aerial lift in the globe.
In the year 1972, Mr. Johnson opened a new factory within Selma. There he produced 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 main source of income of the company.
Wallace Johnson passed away during 1980. At that time, the company UpRight Inc. was sold but his pioneering and inventive spirit lived on. In 1994, UpRight launched the very first micro-scissor within the world. They went on to pioneer the TM12, that is the self-propelled mast lift.