Wally Johnson, back during 1946, created the markets for both aerial work platforms and scaffold towers all by himself. He attained this by establishing a business that became UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was an extremely gifted mechanical engineer who lived in Berkeley, CA. He stumbled upon access machinery when he began searching for a solution to painting his home.
Mr. Johnson found it hard to search for capable scaffolding when he began a home painting project. Current scaffolding was not able to deal with the uneven ground on his land. After being very discontented with his choices, he decided to design his own aluminum scaffold tower complete with adjustable legs.
During that very same year, the Snorkel Company was established in St. Joseph, Missouri. The company was responsible for introducing an innovative new elevating boom lift to the market. The machine was made for rescue and firefighting work. In less than 2 decades, the technology had developed into self-propelled boom lifts.
The very first self-propelled lift was sold by Snorkel in 1977. 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 global domination with his scaffold. When he had accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and make the world's very first self-propelled aerial lift.
Mr. Johnson in the year 1972, opened a factory within Selma, where 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 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 the year 1994, UpRight launched the world's first micro-scissors. They went on to pioneer the TM12, which is the self-propelled mast lift.