Schmitz Cargobull

Schmitz Cargobull AG is a German manufacturer of semi-trailers, trailers and truck bodies. The company's head office is located in Horstmar, Germany, and its registered office is in the neighbouring city of Altenberge in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The family-owned company had 4,920 employees in the 2014/2015 business year and generated a turnover of 1.589 billion euros. It is thus the market leader in Europe. The families of Dr. Heinz Schmitz, Peter Schmitz and Bernd Hoffmann hold equal shares in the company.

The company has its origins in the year 1892. The company's founder, Heinrich Schmitz, began to construct wagons at the family's forge located in Altenberge near Münster. The forge's new business first began to gain headway at the end of the 1920s as a result of increasing motorisation. During this time the company transformed from a craftsman's business into an industrial vehicle manufacturer. The first motor vehicle trailer equipped with solid rubber tyres was delivered in 1928. From 1935 onward semi-trailers and box vehicles with a steel exterior on a wooden frame were manufactured. In 1950 Schmitz Cargobull produced its first insulated and refrigerated body.

The company continued to expand during the 1960s and especially after the first oil crisis at the beginning of the 1970s when large-scale orders from the Near East increased the speed of the company's growth. The beginning of the Iran-Iraq War put an end to the orders from Arabian countries in the 1980s and Schmitz Cargobull underwent a crisis. The political reforms in Eastern Europe and the German Reunification provided the company with new momentum until the company experienced another decline in orders in the middle of the 1990s. This resulted in a rigorous transformation of the production: The product range was restricted to 4 basic types, the number of required parts heavily reduced, the production and delivery times shortened and the labour cost ratio reduced. In March 1999 the company's stock market launch was withdrawn due to poor demand for the shares. Since then no further plans for another stock market launch have been made. In the 2004/2005 business year Schmitz Cargobull declared a turnover of more than 1 billion euros (1.21 bil euros, 36,000 vehicles produced) for the first time. The turnover had doubled within five years and 1,500 new employees had been hired.