Wally Johnson, back in 1946, created the markets for both aerial work platforms and scaffold towers all by himself. He attained this by starting a company which became UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was a really gifted mechanical engineer who hailed from Berkeley, Utah. He stumbled upon access equipment when he began searching for a a way to paint his house.
While Mr. Johnson was embarking on his home painting project, he had a fruitless search for scaffolding which can deal with the uneven terrain which surrounded his house. After being extremely unsatisfied with his choices, he decided to design his very own aluminum scaffold tower complete with adjustable legs.
In 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 machinery was made for firefighting and rescue work. In less than twenty 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 dominance with his scaffold. When he had accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and invent the world's first self-propelled aerial lift.
In 1972, Mr. Johnson opened a new factory within Selma. There he created 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 main source of revenue of the company.
In 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. During the year 1994, UpRight introduced the very first micro-scissor in the world. They went on to pioneer the self-propelled mast lift, the TM12.