Back during 1946, Wally Johnson began to create the markets for both the aerial work platforms and scaffold towers all by himself. He attained this by establishing a company which became UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was an extremely skilled mechanical engineer who hailed from Berkeley, California. He stumbled upon access machinery when he started looking for a solution to painting his house.
Mr. Johnson found it hard to search for capable scaffolding when he started a home painting project. Current scaffolding could not handle the uneven terrain on his land. After being extremely discontented with his options, he decided to design his very own aluminum scaffold tower together with adjustable legs.
The Snorkel Company was also established the same year within St. Joseph, Missouri. This small business helped to revolutionize the new elevating boom lift. The machinery was produced for firefighting and rescue work. In less than 20 years, the technology had developed into self-propelled boom lifts.
The very first self-propelled lift was sold by Snorkel during 1977. This particular product line did not take long to become the main business for the company.
Wallace Johnson rapidly catapulted to the top of the business with his new scaffold. When he had attained this field, he decided to start all over and create the very first self-propelled aerial lift in the world.
Mr. Johnson in the year 1972, opened a factory within Selma, where he manufactured 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 revenue of the company.
In 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 world's very first micro-scissors. They went on to pioneer the TM12, that is the self-propelled mast lift.