18.04.2023

John W. Parker 1935-2023

We received the sad news last week that self-propelled scissor lift pioneer and access industry icon John W. Parker has died.

He passed away on Thursday - April 6th at the age of 87, and leaves behind his wife Marilyn, daughter Lori, and sons Johnny, Robert, David, Mark and Ronnie .
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John W. Parker in 1970

John W. Parker began his career in May 1966 when he went to work for the A1 Machinery Rental company in Los Angeles, which was owned by Bob Irving along with several other rental companies in the greater Los Angeles region. Irving happened to be one of the best customers of Selma Trailer, which started manufacturing a self-propelled boom lift called the Tree Farmer in the early 1960s as it attempted to diversify away from cyclical trailer lift market. The machine was improved and refined into the Tree Master in 1965 and Selma’s president and owner Carl Ruegg thought that this new machine had potential in construction and other markets, and began to sell a few - mostly to airlines - but quickly realised that in order to gain real volume it need to be available to rent.

So, he did the natural thing and approached his best customer - Bob Irving - to see if he would help try and develop a rental market for his self-propelled boom lift. Irving purchased two units - which were rebranded as Manlift for the construction and industrial markets - and Ruegg rented him four more in order to give the trial greater impetus. On Parker's first day with A1 Rentals Irving told him in no uncertain terms that his sole job was to find out “if these boom lifts... will rent to our customers”.
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The original Tree Farmer

I order to help him in his endevours Parker was also given the authority to loan the boom lifts to any customers he thought would benefit the most from using such a machine. He soon found that once a company had used them, they would never go back to their former methods. Parker must have made a pretty decent job of it, as during one of Ruegg’s visits to check on the programme’s progress, Irving asked him if he could convert an old Sky Witch (Made by Ditch Witch) tow-around scissor lift into a self-propelled model by equipping it with the drive mechanism from the Manlift booms. Ruegg took the machine back to Selma and did just that, creating what was almost certainly the very first self-propelled scissor lift, which was developed into the 25ft Manlift SM31- (Manlift always used working height for its nomenclature).

in 1968 Ruegg hired Parker as the Selma Trailer/Manlift international sales manager. Speaking about it a few years later he said: “With a title like that I could get a cup of coffee for a dollar anyplace in the country.” Howeever, the new job only lasted a year or so, Parker quit at the end June 1969, because he said: he was frustrated that Ruegg would not agree to develop or build a smaller scissor lift, on the basis that the cost to manufacture a smaller one was almost the same as a for the larger models.” When Bob Irving heard that Parker was free, he persuaded him to come back to A1 Rentals and on listening to his ideas on smaller scissor lifts agreed to set up a new division/company to design and manufacture them.

Irving named the new business ‘Mark Industries’, after his son Robert Mark Irving (or more likely - we are told - due to his middle name being Mark) However, when the first models - a 10ft and a 14ft mini scissor lift - emerged in 1970 they were branded as Parkerlifts, with A1 Machinery Rental purchasing the first units. The 10ft model was highly unusual in that it was a three wheeler, allowing to turn within its own length.
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1970 - The first Parkerlift, a 10ft 10SP three wheeled model (L-R) Tom Gross, John Parker and Russ Guthery

An 18ft model followed in 1972, designed by Nick Hunt and Russ Guthery. Mark Industries became increasingly successful and was to become a global market leader for a time. But everything changed for Parker when Bob Irving died suddenly in early 1975, leaving the business to his family. The family attorney quickly brought in a new president to run the company - Rallie Rallis - while Dick Moyer became vice president. John Parker was fired a couple of months later.

Now out of a job, Parker began reviewing his options, and towards the end of the year he was approached by Bill Graham of Economy Engineering to design and manufacture a scissor lift that the company could brand and sell alongside its other products. At around the same time Nick Hunt - an engineer from Mark Industries - and four of Mark’s suppliers approached Parker to set up a new company to build scissor lifts. And that is exactly what they did, establishing John W. Parker and Associates. He and Hunt set up a tiny production facility in Paramount, California - a suburb of Los Angeles - part funded by a $20,000 deposit/advance from Economy, and an order for the first 25 units.

By July 1977 production was ready to begin, but in the meantime, Economy had hired a former UpRight engineer to create its own scissor lift range. So, when Parker's first machines shipped in September of that year, they were branded as Hunterlifts, after co-owner Nick Hunt, the Parkerlift name having been left behind with Mark Industries.
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A Hunterlift advert from the late 1980s

The Hunterlift business really took off in 1982 when it landed an $800,000 order from Hertz Equipment. In 1983 the company also began building scissor lifts for Calavar/Condor and later teamed up with Frank Delaney in Ireland who began selling them in large numbers in Scandinavia.

By 1985 the two partners - Hunt and Parker - began to have differences of opinion on how the business should develop and progress and as a result they decided to sell up and began talking to prospective buyers. The British owned conglomerate Simon was the first in the picture. However, Parker's acquirer of choice was Snorkel, which at the time did not have a scissor lift product line. Parker met with Snorkel president Art Moore at the AED convention and ARA show in early 1987 and a deal was reached soon after, leading to the sale of the Hunterlift business to Snorkel’s parent company Figgie. While Snorkel chief executive Art Moore would have overall responsibity for the Hunterlift buisness, John Parker stayed on as president to run the business as a standalone company, which included opening a new production facility in nearby Norwalk, California starting off with 55 employees, many of whom only spoke Spanish, presenting a bit of an issue for Parker who only spoke English.

Later in 1987 Figgie acquired Economy Engineering, against Art Moore's advice, which complicated the situation, given that all three brands had conflicting dealer networks, with some of Snorkel's larger distributors becoming irritated when they were undercut by Hunterlift. John W. Parker and Associates was closed, at least as a corporation, in 1990 as Figgie looked to consolidate the Snorkel, Economy and Hunterlift operations into a single streamlined entity/operation. We understand that John Parker continued to work in the aerial lift industry until somewhere around 1996, before he retired properly.

There are some who have credited John Parker as the inventor of the scissor lift aerial work platform. This is absolutely not the case, however, he did play a much more important role than that, in developing and championing the self-propelled scissor, especially smaller models, and was right there at the beginning. He is a true icon of the industry and yet has received very little credit for the important role he played in the development of the aerial lift industry.

We hope to reach some of his former colleagues and family over the coming days, so that we can update this tribute to a remarkable man, if you can help please contact us at [email protected]- or feel free to comment below.