Back in the year 1946, Wally Johnson started to create the markets for both the scaffold towers and aerial work platforms all by himself. He accomplished this by establishing a business which was referred to as UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was an extremely skilled mechanical engineer who hailed from Berkeley, California. He stumbled upon access machinery when he began looking for a a way to paint his house.
While Mr. Johnson was embarking on his house painting project, he had a fruitless search for scaffolding which could handle the uneven terrain that surrounded his home. After being extremely discontented with his choices, he decided to design his own aluminum scaffold tower complete with adjustable legs.
The Snorkel Company was also founded the very same year within St. Joseph, Missouri. This small company helped to transform the new elevating boom lift. The machinery was made for rescue and firefighting work. In less than 2 decades, the technology had developed into self-propelled boom lifts.
During 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 attain worldwide domination with his scaffold. After he had accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and make the very first self-propelled aerial lift in the globe.
In 1972, Mr. Johnson opened a new factory in Selma. There he manufactured the "Flying Carpet" scissor lift. After this exciting and new machinery 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 in 1980. At that time, the company UpRight Inc. was sold but his pioneering and inventive spirit lived on. In the year 1994, UpRight launched the first micro-scissor in the globe. They went on to pioneer the self-propelled mast lift, the TM12.