About Us

Brian Townshend started Motorwell Services mainly specialising in motor mechanics. Mostly servicing cars, utes, vans and trucks because of our country setting in North Canterbury. This also involved farm tractors and machinery on the farms or in our workshop.

Motorwell’s first opportunity of getting into sales was when they got the Hustler handling equipment agency for North Canterbury. They manufactured three point linkage forklifts which you could attach easily to tractors and these sold well in the industry in Christchurch. Farmers bought these forklifts to lift bins of potatoes and produce. Motorwell also got into changing tractors into forklifts and bin tippers. Then given the opportunity to look after a machine that was used for height work in orchards called Hydralada.

The business moved from Boys Road to 12 Albert Street in Rangiora and bought out NC4WD (North Canterbury Four Wheel Drive). The business grew and Brian’s (the founder) 2 sons, Richard, Mark came into the business as they finished school. In 1994 the Townshend family had an inspiration of starting a business selling truck and machinery mirrors which is when ‘TransQuip’ was born. They wanted a change, so took the big step of selling shatterproof mirrors to transport and machinery operators. Of course, they were a great product to sell – but not being breakable, meant there was very little repeat business. So next came standard glass mirrors used in the industry, then came all sorts of other associated products like truck and safety lighting, alloy loading ramps and so on.

Brian and Lincoln (Brian’s 3rd son) were now full time in the parts side of the business (TransQuip) so the decision was made to sell the garage Motorwell Services and all concentrate on growing TransQuip. This created the need to move to new premises at Edward Street, Rangiora. The product range was constantly being expanded to suit our customer’s demands, so they included site gear like signage and cones.

TransQuip stared in the North Island continuing to expand its reach throughout New Zealand with its first Auckland Salesman; Rodney Kelland.

The Canterbury earthquakes hit in 2010 and 2011 and TransQuip was in the thick of it helping customers out wherever they could. With Canterbury shaking like it was, no one would go into a trench without protection. The demand for trench shoring soared and the Rangiora premises became too small, so TransQuip leased some land in Christchurch, and set up 2 containers and a yard, mainly to give customers better service with the trench shoring. This was the beginning of our Guardian branded products.

The current Christchurch property, (2 Edmonton Road, Hornby, Christchurch) came up for sale and TransQuip purchased it. This is in an excellent location with many Christchurch customers being in the Hornby and Sockburn areas. Also being near the main courier and freight companies which are very important for dispatching products throughout New Zealand quickly.

For 9 years there was only a rep servicing Auckland and there was big demand for TransQuip products in the North Island. Resulting in the setup of a small Auckland branch at another business on Mount Smart Road, Penrose. After 6 months TransQuip moved to its own unit on Great South Road, Penrose. The 3rd generation of the family started working in the business and with some other great staff, many changes were brought about to update the systems and methods.

Auckland had grown and the warehouse space had become too small, so another move was made into a bigger unit on the same block at 761 Great South Road, Penrose. A lot of stock was now stored in Auckland, and this was the base 5 staff worked from.

Covid stuck in March and the team worked from home or alone in the warehouse dispatching essential products to keep their customers operating. The webstore proved itself in this time of ‘social distancing’.

TransQuip purchased a small mudflap printing company and now custom prints top quality mudflaps in-house at the Christchurch head office. The custom printed mudflaps are now trusted by top brands such as Fruehauf, Camco, Fleetline and Helmack.

Around this time, it came apparent that our TransQuip and Guardian products & services were focused on different customers so the decision was to promote our Guardian brand into a side by side brand with TransQuip rather than a sub brand. This has enabled us to be more focused in our approach. As the Auckland branch and Guardian hire continued to grow rapidly, TransQuip moved again to 6a Te Apunga Place Mt Wellington in Auckland and started the Auckland hire yard, hiring shields to North Island customers to keep their team’s safe.

Now, in 2025, Guardian Civil (the civil side of TransQuip) as opened another yard in Wellington at 24E Takapu Road, Grenada North. This is right above Highway 1 in an ideal location for quick access into Wellington or to the north and is to provide a better level of care to hire customers in the bottom half of the North Island. Thanks to the hard-working hire team and loyal customers that chose to keep their team safe in trenches with Guardian civils top quality aluminium trench shields!