Courage to tinker.

Sandra Hunke is a trained plant mechanic and an influencer. Together with Deutsches Handwerksblatt she is filming a video series in which she spends one day at a time immersed in different craft businesses.

The target audience: mainly young women who are still hesitant about skilled trades because the professions are often heavily male-dominated. What makes the format special is that Sandra Hunke doesn’t know where she will end up beforehand. At the end of April the mystery took her to RKF-Bleses in Neuss, an authorized Unimog service partner.

Blindfolded, with a few small objects in her hand – she has to guess the profession from them. After a few hints the answer is clear: Unimog.

Welcome to RKF-Bleses.

Hardly any vehicle is as adaptable as the Unimog – as workshop manager Kai Kossian demonstrates during his tour of RKF-Bleses' premises. The oldest vehicle stands here right next to the newest: a specimen from the very first generation, long since converted into a motorhome and still on the road, alongside a current model with a touchscreen in the cockpit.

That is precisely the company's strength: RKF-Bleses has completely specialised in the Unimog and knows every generation, every conversion, every attachment.

You don't learn a craft by watching; you learn it by doing. The real highlight of the day: working in the workshop with Jana, a qualified commercial vehicle mechatronics technician. Under her guidance Sandra Hunke doesn't take on token tasks but real work on the vehicle – from the air dryer cartridge in the brake system to a look under the hood. Precision matters more than strength: whether it's the exact seating of a component or the trained eye for a leak that would otherwise be easily overlooked. In the end there is a vehicle that runs reliably and an intern who has realised: skills can be learned, regardless of who is holding the tools.

The job has more facets than you might expect from the outside: Sandra Hunke gets to ride along on a test run in the Unimog and experiences the unfamiliar driving behaviour up close – a vehicle that feels completely different from any car. Afterwards she works at the service reception, the first point of contact between customer and service, and performs the TecCheck on a real customer vehicle. 

Two completely different skills in a single day: technical understanding and the right way to interact with customers.

The Unimog is celebrating its 80th anniversary this year and is still being built – accordingly, the work ranges from vintage vehicles to the current model, from the vehicle itself to the full range of attachments. Sandra's advice to women who want to enter the trades: be brave and have the courage to try. "It's not just strength, it's also a lot of brains." 

Sandra Hunke's verdict is clear: "Doing it woman‑to‑woman was really great fun." That day she only worked on Unimogs — and now she's saving up for her own.