Back during the year 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 business that was called UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was an extremely gifted 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 fruitless search for scaffolding that could deal with the uneven ground which surrounded his home. After being extremely discontented with his options, he decided to design his own aluminum scaffold tower complete with adjustable legs.
During that same year, the Snorkel Company was founded in St. Joseph, Missouri. The company was responsible for introducing a revolutionary new elevating boom lift to the market. The machinery was produced for firefighting and rescue work. In less than 20 years, the technology had developed into self-propelled boom lifts.
In 1977, Snorkel sold its first self-propelled lift. 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 business and attain worldwide domination with his scaffold. Once he had attained this field, he decided to start all over and make the very first self-propelled aerial lift in the world.
During the year 1972, Mr. Johnson opened a new factory in Selma. There he produced the "Flying Carpet" scissor lift. After this new and exciting equipment exploded onto the marketplace, the ground-breaking product soon out-ranked the scaffolding component as the company`s main source of revenue.
In 1980, Wallace Johnson passed away, while the company, UpRight Inc. was sold at that time too. Mr Johnson's inventive and pioneering spirit did continue to live on. During the year 1994, UpRight introduced the very first micro-scissor in the globe. They went on to pioneer the self-propelled mast lift, the TM12.