Herman’s Story

After a handful of short trips in Dev with Coco (our off road trailer), we realised Digit is just too big for us to travel long term comfortably in all weathers so we started to investigate alternatives. We looked at larger trailers, large vans and soon found ourselves looking at smaller 4×4 trucks where a small habitable box could be placed on the chassis. With anything you buy, you generally have a criteria. Not us, we start off with ideas and then often find those ideas go out of control & we end up buying something that we initially had no intention of buying. It’s a (bad) habit of ours – years ago, we were going to buy a cheapish Subaru Impreza estate car; we ended up buying a nearly new Porsche Cayenne Turbo!! There’s a commonality somewhere there but I have no idea what it is. Anyway, back to Herman….

 Through our research we now knew how we wanted the box to be, so this was something we could tick off the requirement list that we had finally started to collate. We had identified Bliss Mobil as the builders of the box as they are able to build everything we could possibly want in the habitation box whilst giving us the ability to be self sufficient for a significant amount of time and be capable for all weather extremes. However, this hadn’t solved the question of what truck.

We spent a few months researching various different types of 4×4 trucks, looking at all the pro’s & cons. Neither of us have an HGV licence so this immediately started to limit our options. We are old enough that we are lucky 7.5 tonne trucks are included on our normal driving licences but trying to find something that actually gave us what we needed & wanted was becoming tough. We eventually started to narrow the list down; accepted that we needed to do our HGV licence tests and found our hearts were set on a Unimog. But trying to find one that ticked what we wanted was difficult unless we purchased new. Still researching, we again had the realisation that the chassis length on a Unimog may still not be big enough so we carried on searching.

Now, I’m not entirely sure how an ex-military truck came into the picture but we started to hear about the MAN HX60’s that were being disposed of by the British Army through a UK auction site. Trying to be sensible, we started to watch a couple of the auctions to try and gauge the quality of the trucks, the prices they sold for whilst learning as much as we could about the capability of them. As everyone will know, 2020 was a year it was impossible to do anything. With the Global Pandemic, doing anything was near on impossible never mind trying to view a truck. Then, out of the blue, John received a phone call from someone who recommended Tim & Pam from Marple Road Garage. They had one available and were able to talk us through everything about the truck. They sent us pictures, full details on its running state, in fact everything we could have possibly asked for. So we struck a deal and Herman was ours. Both Tim & Pam were so patient with us. Humoured our daft questions and went the extra mile to make sure we were happy. We cannot say thank you enough for your patience & support and if anyone is looking for a HX60 truck, please drop these guys a line. They are amazing.

It was the August 2020 Bank Holiday when Herman was delivered to us. He certainly caused a stir as he was driven into our estate but to be honest we were a bit too excited to notice. It was only when all the neighbours mentioned him when we bumped into them that we realised how much attention he created. Here he was, a 2012 MAN HX60 Winch Truck with 5000km’s on the clock. He had hardly been used and we were now the proud owners of an ex-military truck which is going to be our next adventure vehicle.

First impressions, he was huge. Definitely big enough to accommodate our big plans…or so we thought.

We spent the next few months tidying him up a bit, starting to put some insulation into the CAB and trying to register him with the DVLA. We thought registering him would be fairly straightforward but in a COVID world it was just a period of waiting, delays & rejection. Okay, the rejection was probably our fault as we wanted to try and register him whilst making him MOT exempt. Now, with the HX60’s this is possible as they are a multifunction vehicle used for many reasons within the army. The fail on our side (& many have succeeded) was we didn’t put him through an MOT first. Lesson learnt and we eventually got him registered & MOT exempt but we had to do the initial test.

We love Herman & we enjoyed tinkering on him at weekends whilst waiting to be in the position to start the box build. The planning we were going through from what paint colour, where to put speakers for a stereo, what additional external lights did we want and so on was fun. Even Digit (who hates the car) wasn’t phased by Herman. Everything was starting to click into place.

Then the sinking feeling happened…we realised Digit was going to struggle in the cab. Don’t get me wrong, there is loads of room in the CAB but Digit is currently suffering from lockdown belly (aren’t we all) and he is currently 60kg. He was too big to fit comfortably behind the seats and being the type of truck Herman is, there isn’t an option to have a cut through from the box to the cab (which was a compromise for us). Digit will lose some weight but it isn’t just the size of his belly we had to consider. He’s a tall & long dog also. We would have to make some serious adjustments to the cab to make it work safely and then still have a risk that it wouldn’t work. We had to make a very hard decision, do we keep Herman or sell him. As you can probably tell, I get emotionally attached to the vehicles we buy & travel in. They have treated us well and we have a lot of memories attached to them. Herman is the same.

So, one sad weekend in March 2021 we decided we would sell Herman and rethink our truck decisions. We were gutted but we had to do what is going to be the right thing long term. Within hours, word had reached someone that we were considering selling Herman and they contacted us. The benefit we had was Herman was in great condition, road registered and had a winch. Many of the recent trucks going through the same auction were either older, had a few battle scars or didn’t have a winch (with the controller). He was also known in the world of Facebook as we had joined a few enthusiasts groups so he had a bit of known history. We were contacted by a lovely couple from Yorkshire who had been searching for some time for a truck like Herman. They had tried the auctions but were previously unsuccessful or the trucks weren’t right for them. They had heard about Herman and by the end of that week, Herman was theirs.

It was an emotional day when Herman was collected to go to his new home. But we are so happy that the couple who bought him will also be transforming him into an overland truck. He will get to travel around the world in all his chunkiness.

Goodbye Herman, it was amazing to have you as part of our family. We look forward to following your transformation & travels.