Wally Johnson, back in the year 1946, created the markets for both scaffold towers and aerial work platforms all by himself. He accomplished this by establishing a business which was called UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was an extremely skilled mechanical engineer who hailed from Berkeley, CA. He stumbled upon access machines when he began looking for a solution to painting his house.
When Mr. Johnson was embarking on his house painting project, he had a futile search for scaffolding that can deal with the uneven terrain which surrounded his home. After being extremely discontented with his options, he decided to design his very own aluminum scaffold tower complete with adjustable legs.
The Snorkel Company was also established the very same year in St. Joseph, Missouri. This small company helped to revolutionize the new elevating boom lift. The equipment was made for rescue and firefighting work. In less than 2 decades, the technology had developed into self-propelled boom lifts.
In the year 1977, Snorkel sold its very first self-propelled lift. This particular 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 worldwide dominance with his scaffold. After he had accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and invent the first self-propelled aerial lift in the globe.
During the year 1972, Mr. Johnson opened a new factory within Selma. There he created 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.
Wallace Johnson passed away during the year 1980. At that time, the company UpRight Inc. was sold but his inventive and pioneering spirit lived on. In 1994, UpRight launched the world's first micro-scissors. They went on to pioneer the self-propelled mast lift, the TM12.