If you’ve spent your life hauling freight in a big rig, there’s something anticlimactic about a final ride in the back of a car-based hearse.
Neill Hutchingson thought the same, which is why he set out to create something that better honoured the legacy of life on the road. The result is a funeral vehicle unlike any other: a fully customised Volvo NH, carefully repurposed to give fellow truckers a send-off that reflects who they really were.
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It wasn’t part of some long-term business plan. In fact, the idea came about through a simple act of kindness.
“One of my son’s drivers lost his father, a long-time truck driver,” Hutchingson recalls.
“They asked if we could do the final journey by truck. I said yes, but only if we do it right.” From there, the seed was planted, and so began one of the most unusual and heartfelt builds in British haulage.
What began as a thoughtful one-off soon took on a life of its own.
“With Facebook and whatnot, word got around,” Hutchingson says.
“People started asking to borrow the platform or wanted us to do a funeral for them. We probably ended up doing half a dozen. But the problem was, it meant taking a truck off the road for about three days, polishing it, doing the funeral, then removing the platform. Financially, it didn’t stack up.”
That realisation sparked the next step: building a dedicated vehicle. Initially, Hutchingson considered a Renault Magnum.
“But Magnums are an acquired taste,” he laughs. In the end, he settled on something even more distinctive – a bonneted Volvo NH. It promised exactly the kind of presence he was after.
The Volvo NH is something of a curiosity in the UK. Never officially sold there, these bonneted trucks were built primarily for markets in South America, mainland Europe, and Australia.
European-spec models began life as conventional Volvo FH cabs assembled in Sweden, which were then shipped to Brazil where they were repositioned on the chassis to create that distinctive long-nose profile.
The completed trucks were returned to Europe for sale. In contrast, Australian NHs were assembled locally in right-hand-drive at Volvo’s Wacol plant in Queensland, tailored to meet domestic requirements.
Only a handful of Volvo NHs ever made it to the UK, all as private imports. Hutchingson’s example is a relatively late 2002 model that originally worked in France before making its way to Holland, where he eventually found it.
Under the hood sits a 12-litre, 460hp Euro-3 engine paired with a 12-speed manual gearbox. Despite its age, it remains mechanically strong, with around 1.2 million km on the clock.
The white NH had previously done duty as a show truck – complete with roof beacons hinting at a past life in construction.
Hutchingson paid £32,000 (around AU$60,000) for it, but that was just the beginning.
“It’s probably cost me another £30,000 (roughly AU$57,000) and two-and-a-half years to make it look like this,” he says. “The budget definitely got out of hand. But I wanted to do it right.”
And the result is nothing short of spectacular. The NH has been fully repainted in a tasteful shade of grey – a colour Hutchingson deliberately chose.
“Grey’s easier to keep clean, and it looks great too,” he explains.
