Back during 1946, Wally Johnson began to create the markets for both the scaffold towers and aerial work platforms all by himself. He did this by starting a company which became UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was a really gifted mechanical engineer who hailed from Berkeley, California. He stumbled upon access equipment when he started looking for a solution to painting his home.
Mr. Johnson found it hard to look 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 extremely discontented with his choices, he decided to design his very own aluminum scaffold tower along with adjustable legs.
The Snorkel Company was also founded the same year within 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.
The very first self-propelled lift was sold by Snorkel in the year 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 worldwide dominance with his scaffold. Once he had accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and invent the very first self-propelled aerial lift in the world.
During 1972, Mr. Johnson opened a new factory in Selma. There he created the "Flying Carpet" scissor lift. After this new and exciting machine exploded onto the marketplace, the ground-breaking product soon out-ranked the scaffolding component as the main source of income of the company.
During 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. In 1994, UpRight launched the first micro-scissor in the world. They went on to pioneer the self-propelled mast lift, the TM12.