Piako Transport Engineering ( PTE ) was formed in January 1990 primarily as an engineering and maintenance company to the Transport Industry.
Colin Richardson had completed a 10 year stint at TRT, where he completed an NZCE Mechanical along with a fitter turner apprenticeship. Colin and Tarnia began PTE under the roof of Piako Freighters Ltd, who was a well established carrier operating throughout the North and in to the South Islands. Colin provided maintenence and engineering to the predominantly Mack fleet of PFL.
Being based in Morrinsville, the heart of a large agricultural base, PTE found that it could also provide the same services to the agricultural contracting equipment.
The demand for PTE repair work meant we had the ability to learn the areas of the equipment that needed developing further to provide more reliability and from this we began producing our own brand of Transport Equipment, beginning with light weight truck bodies and curtainsiders, then eventually moving to trailer manufacture in 1994 with a 4 axle stock trailer that is still, to this day, going strong in the South Island.
In 1996 PTE completed construction and moved to its own and still current premises, with a purpose built workshop and yard.
Following the construction of that first trailer came orders for trailers of a different nature, being medium sized lowloader semi trailers. With the help of the late Stuart Dolly in sales, PTE began a 19 year run of manufacturing medium sized transporter and lowloader type trailers, tilt deck trailers, simple trailers, stock trailers, bath tub tippers, tanker chassis’ along with truck chassis alterations, flat deck bodies, transporter truck decks, drop side tippers, bath tub tippers, drawbeams, crane installs and general engineering, all with an outstanding reliability record.