SCHMIDT Group

When Alfred Schmidt senior opened his workshop in St Blasien in 1920, he was certainly not aware that he was laying the foundations for an enterprise that was to be active throughout the world. And indeed, it was a few years before the small repair shop was known outside the local area.
The large amount of snow in the higher parts of the Black Forest made many companies think about mechanical clearing and Alfred Schmidt was one of the pioneers.

As early as 1925, he mounted a wedge-shaped plough onto a truck and in 1938, he was the first to screw a lateral plough onto one, thus further improving snow clearance. The breakthrough for the small company – and therefore for SCHMIDT as a proprietary name - came in 1950 when the UNIMOG, the classical all-purpose vehicle, was to add snow clearance to its range of functions. Chance had it that those responsible came knocking at Alfred Schmidt’s door, and a trend-setting cooperation began. In December, 1950, a SCHMIDT snowplough on a UNIMOG cleared a road of snow for the first time.

SCHMIDT went on to develop numerous attachments for road cleaning and snow clearing for the “engine-driven all-round machine”. In 1952, a snow cutter was, for the first time, mounted onto the vehicle, which was by then being built by Mercedes Benz, and in the same year the development of spreaders began.

Between 1950 and 1960, SCHMIDT extended its range of products, with summer maintenance machines added to winter maintenance in 1954. A rear-mounted sweeper was built for tractors and two years later the UNIMOG was also used to power machines in this segment of the market, followed in 1960 by the first suction sweeper in operation. In the same year, the “Airport Maintenance” division began gathering speed, with snow blowers enabling air traffic to continue despite falls of snow.
Since then, SCHMIDT has come up almost every year with something new or upgraded in its product range.

Snowploughs, rotating snow clearing machines, spreaders, brine dispensers, compact and mounted sweepers, road repair vehicles, sweeper blowers and spaying vehicles make SCHMIDT an organisation which operates world-wide.

In 2005, SCHMIDT took the opportunity to acquire BEILHACK, the world leader on the railtrack snow-clearance market.

Today, SCHMIDT can present itself as a group of companies which leads the market world-wide with top-quality special machines and vehicles for the clearing, de-icing and cleaning of road and airport surfaces of all types. Wherever it is, pavements, pedestrian zones, roads, motorways, airports, or railway lines - SCHMIDT makes for a safe journey.