Back in the year 1946, Wally Johnson started to create the markets for both the aerial work platforms and scaffold towers all by himself. He attained this by establishing a company which became UpRight. Mr. Wally Johnson was a very gifted mechanical engineer who hailed from Berkeley, CA. He stumbled upon access equipment when he began looking for a a way to paint his home.
Mr. Johnson found it hard to search for capable scaffolding when he started a house painting project. Existing scaffolding could not deal with the uneven terrain on his land. After being extremely discontented with his options, he decided to design his very own aluminum scaffold tower complete with adjustable legs.
The Snorkel Company was also established the same year within St. Joseph, Missouri. This small company helped to transform the new elevating boom lift. The machinery was produced for rescue and firefighting work. In less than 20 years, the technology had developed into self-propelled boom lifts.
The very first self-propelled lift was sold by Snorkel during 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 domination with his scaffold. When he had accomplished this field, he decided to start all over and make the first self-propelled aerial lift in the world.
Mr. Johnson in the year 1972, opened a factory within Selma, where he made the "Flying Carpet" scissor lift. After this new and exciting machine exploded onto the marketplace, the innovative 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 as well. Mr Johnson's inventive and pioneering spirit did continue to live on. In the year 1994, UpRight launched the first micro-scissor in the world. They went on to pioneer the self-propelled mast lift, the TM12.