Wally Johnson, back during 1946, created the markets for both aerial work platforms and scaffold towers all by himself. He accomplished this by starting a business which became UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was a very skilled mechanical engineer who hailed from Berkeley, CA. He stumbled upon access equipment when he started looking for a a way to paint his home.
Mr. Johnson found it hard to search for capable scaffolding when he began a house painting project. Existing scaffolding could not deal with the uneven terrain on his property. After being very unsatisfied with his options, he decided to design his own aluminum scaffold tower complete with adjustable legs.
During 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 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 in the year 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 accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and invent the world's first self-propelled aerial lift.
Mr. Johnson in 1972, opened a factory within Selma, where he produced the "Flying Carpet" scissor lift. After this new and exciting equipment exploded onto the marketplace, the ground-breaking product soon out-ranked the scaffolding component as the main source of revenue of the company.
Wallace Johnson passed away during the year 1980. At that time, the company UpRight Inc. was sold but his pioneering and inventive spirit lived on. In the year 1994, UpRight introduced the world's first micro-scissors. They went on to pioneer the TM12, which is the self-propelled mast lift.