Back during the year 1946, Wally Johnson began to create the markets for the aerial work platforms and scaffold towers all by himself. He accomplished this by starting a business which became UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was a very skilled mechanical engineer who lived in Berkeley, CA. He stumbled upon access machines when he started looking for a solution to painting his house.
Mr. Johnson found it hard to look for capable scaffolding when he started a house painting project. Existing scaffolding was not able to deal with the uneven terrain on his land. After being very unsatisfied with his options, he decided to design his own aluminum scaffold tower together with adjustable legs.
In that same year, the Snorkel Company was founded within St. Joseph, Missouri. The company was responsible for introducing a revolutionary new elevating boom lift to the market. The machine was produced for firefighting and rescue work. In less than 20 years, the technology had developed into self-propelled boom lifts.
In the year 1977, Snorkel sold its first self-propelled lift. This particular product line did not take long to become the company's main business.
Wallace Johnson quickly catapulted to the top of the industry with his new scaffold. After he had accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and create the world's first self-propelled aerial lift.
Mr. Johnson during 1972, opened a factory within Selma, where he created the "Flying Carpet" scissor lift. After this exciting and new 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 pioneering and inventive spirit did continue to live on. During the year 1994, UpRight introduced the world's very first micro-scissors. They went on to pioneer the TM12, that is the self-propelled mast lift.