Stuttgart / St. Blasien – Exactly 70 years ago, the success story of the Mercedes-Benz Unimog for snow clearing began. Just at the right time when there was demand, Alfred Schmidt, a young qualified engineer from St. Blasien in the Black Forest had the right idea. His customer Alfred Hitz from Falkenau in the Black Forest needed a snow plough for his new Mercedes-Benz Unimog 2010. The clearing width of 2200 mm and height of the plough of 1100 mm had to be coordinated with the 1630 mm wide Unimog with its 18 kW (25 hp) engine. Schmidt designed the "K 1 snow plough", which back then was lowered or raised mechanically using a hand wheel via a chain. That was the starting signal for the unique career of the Unimog as a basic vehicle for winter snow clearing. Up to today, about 100 000 Unimog have been equipped with Schmidt winter service technology. In addition, there are many other winter service bodybuilders who swear by the Unimog as the carrying vehicle.

Today the Unimog exists in two different model series: as the "Unimog implement carrier" – which you normally see painted orange with a snow plough in the winter or a mowing implement in the summer – it comprises the models U 219 to U 535 and deals with a wide variety of tasks in municipal work, agriculture and logistics. As the "extreme off-road Unimog" (U 4023 and U 5023) it shows excellent driving properties in rough terrain, such as are required for the power industry, fighting forest fires or in emergency rescue.