Founded in Invercargill in 1997 by Stephen Keast, Transport Engineering Southland manufactures high- quality, efficiently designed trailers and truck decks. It specialises in belly/bottom dumpers, milk tankers, stock trucks, lift-out side tippers, alloy/steel bathtubs, transporters and custom builds.

Stephen, the owner and manager, started by completing small maintenance contracts on heavy trucks and trailers and has grown the business to what it is today – a team of 50 people, with a third workshop almost complete.

The company has customers nationwide, and expanded into the Australian market in 2007 with one of its speciality products – the three-axle semi belly dumper.

“We’ve got bottom dumpers all around the country and in Australia. We got every different design of bottom dumper you can think of,” Steve says.

“We have B-doubles and semi-trailers running in Australia, and the majority of our bottom dumpers go to the North Island in New Zealand.”

Steve says TES has specialty teams working on each project type across the business.

“We do everything in-house. We have our paint workshop, our own mechanical workshop. We have our own assembly staff, as well as electricians,” Steve says.

“We do all our own design modifications, cutting and plate processing. Our team is extremely capable. We also have a long-term relationship with Transtec Dynamics for our major design and model work.

“We have one division that does each of the major sections of the business – we have a crew that specialises in each of them.

“Our designs have been refined over years and years to get them to where they are now. While we do custom work, we are more about refining what we do, getting better at it, and getting a nationwide customer base.”

Steve says the process with customers is fully collaborative.

“We work with them from the initial quote, finding out what in particular they are after, what application it is being used for, and base it off our previous models. Most of our models are relatively adaptable, and we can customise them pretty easily,” he says.

Steve says the majority of TES business is returning customers.

“We work with the idea of developing a relationship with our clients and that we are going to build with them again,” he says.

“We are not trying to fit someone into a unit that they don’t want. We design and we build a unit with the future in mind.

“We only deal with good, solid, reputable people, and they can expect the same from us.”

Find out more at tes.co.nz