
I Love My Job – The vintage hearse driver
Meet Brendan Kinsella from Kent who has converted the family’s 91-year-old Guy lorry to take people on their final journey. Sharon Barnard reports
He left it to my father who restored it and took it to rallies throughout Australia. When he died it made its way back to me here in Kent.
One day I received a call from a family whose father was a lorry driver and had passed away. They felt the appropriate way to make his final journey was on the back of my Guy lorry.
I was so naive about funerals so I Googled “the length and width of coffins” and measured the flatbed part of the lorry to see if one would fit on the back. It did easily, so I said it would be a pleasure to use it for the deceased.
After the funeral the manager of W A Truelove & Son Ltd called me in for a chat. I thought I had done something wrong, but he told me the family absolutely loved my service and why didn’t I turn it into a funeral hearse?
It is the only Guy lorry funeral hearse in the world that we know of and I really enjoy driving it. It only goes 25 mph or thereabouts and [some drivers] don’t realise how slow I am going.
However, when I am doing a funeral the funeral director sits next to me, and I have the family behind me in a hearse which controls the cars behind [them] so I am now king of the road!
To tell you the truth I haven’t thought about how I’d like to be sent off, but my wife and daughter might use the lorry. It has been a big part of their lives too.
This is a preview of a feature article.
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