Wally Johnson, back during 1946, created the markets for both aerial work platforms and scaffold towers all by himself. He did this by establishing a business that became UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was an extremely gifted mechanical engineer who resided in Berkeley, CA. He stumbled upon access machinery when he started searching for a a way to paint 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 property. After being really unsatisfied with his choices, he decided to design his very 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 machine was made for firefighting and rescue work. In less than 2 decades, 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.
It did not take long for Wallace Johnson to catapult to the top of the industry and achieve worldwide dominance with his scaffold. Once he had accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and create the world's very first self-propelled aerial lift.
During the year 1972, Mr. Johnson opened a new factory within Selma. There he created the "Flying Carpet" scissor lift. After this new and exciting machinery exploded onto the marketplace, the innovative 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 inventive and pioneering spirit did continue to live 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.