The pink MAN I couldn’t forget
The pink MAN I couldn’t forget
I went looking for a bright pink MAN at RTX because it was impossible to ignore. What I found was not a show truck, but a heartbreaking story about loss.
Earlier this year, I was at RTX in the UK, test driving trucks and roaming the exhibition halls for stories. You can read all about the show on page 76 of the August issue of FOCUS, but during my visit, one image refused to leave me.
Among the machinery, chrome and corporate branding was a bright pink MAN. It stood out like a flare. I saw it while test driving trucks and, later, I actually walked out of the fairgrounds to find it. Up close, it was even more beautiful. Airbrushed Disney characters covered the cab; a woman’s face looked out from the artwork. The registration plate read AL14 KEL, and there was a name on the truck. Just above the steps, it read: Kelly Hancock 1975 – 2013. I had no idea who Kelly was… but I decided I needed to find out.
Commemorating his niece
After some rudimentary detective work, I discovered that the truck belongs to Graham Poole, founder of Graham Poole Road Transport in England. Kelly Hancock was his niece (the daughter of his wife’s sister). He had known her since she was seven. “She was a fun-loving girl. She loved life,” he tells me during an emotional interview.
Everyone loved Kelly, he says. She was friendly, warm and close to the family. She would come to Graham with her problems and, by the sound of it, knew that he would always listen. Then came a phone call that changed everything. Kelly asked Graham to meet her at The Falcon, their local pub. She had found a lump in her neck; doctors told her she had 12 to 18 months to live. That was in February 2013. She died in September.
Seven months
There is something brutal about reducing a life to seven months. Graham still sounds stunned by the speed of it. “We could not get over how fast it spread through her body. Within a couple of months, her entire body was riddled with cancer,” he recalls.
Kelly was 37 when she died – an “absolutely amazing mother”, says Graham. She also had a dream: she wanted to take her daughters to Disneyland in Florida. She never got the chance to do so.
That is the part that stays with me. Not the diagnosis, not even the speed of the illness, but the ordinary family dream that cancer stole. A mother wanted to take her children somewhere magical. There should have been photographs and laughter. Instead, there was a funeral.
A truck for Kelly
Before Kelly died, Graham had already begun thinking about creating a truck in her honour. He discussed this with the family – they thought it was a great idea. More importantly, Kelly knew about it.
An earlier DAF had been given a tribute treatment before she died, although Graham was never completely happy with the airbrushing. Kelly, characteristically, thought it was hilarious. “She loved it,” he says. But Graham wasn’t happy; he wanted to do it properly. He approached renowned British airbrush artist Adam Haden and they began working on a design for a new MAN TGX XXL 480. The truck was painted Kelly’s favourite colour, pink, then covered with Disney characters and a portrait of Kelly herself. The plate AL14 KEL means “All for Kelly”.
Working off a much-loved photograph, renowned British airbrush artist Adam Haden depicted an image of Kelly and her daughters, Shannon and Emily. "That photograph is a family favourite. I think it's fair to say that Adam did a fantastic job of recreating the photo on the truck," says Graham.
Kelly’s Dreams
They called the truck Kelly’s Dreams and, for Graham, that name contains almost everything. “It was about the Disneyland holiday Kelly wanted for her girls; the life she should have had; the memories that we – as a family – were determined not to lose,” he tells me during the interview.
The MAN began appearing at truck shows and, from 2014, at truck racing meetings. Graham says it became one of the most photographed trucks in the paddock, apart from the race trucks themselves. It has also helped raise money for the hospice service that cared for Kelly during her final days. Graham believes she would have loved the attention. Would she have appreciated this enormous pink MAN carrying her face and her unrealised dream around Britain? “100%.”
Built from one truck
There is another story running quietly behind Kelly’s Dreams. Graham started his transport business in 1998 with one truck after years behind the wheel himself, including driving for Tesco. He never intended to build an empire. One truck was supposed to be enough. Then came work for Mauser UK, followed by Home Bargains, and the business kept growing.
Today the fleet numbers 28 trucks, including MANs, Scanias and DAFs. Some of these work punishing schedules, running seven days a week and covering around 300,000 to 350,000km a year. He tends to buy used trucks for those demanding applications – and he literally runs them until they’re incapable of working any longer.
Kelly’s Dreams, however, is different. The MAN is now 12 years old and Graham has bought it from the company – he worried that continued commercial work might damage it. So, it has been spared the relentless life of an ordinary fleet truck. A mechanic drives it to race meetings, where Graham Poole Road Transport sponsors Bowler Racing.
Still out there
This issue of FOCUS celebrates women as SA marks Women’s Day in August, during Women’s Month. There are many ways to celebrate extraordinary women: articles (we have several of those in this issue), awards, speeches, flowers… and sometimes, apparently, a bright pink MAN.
Kelly never became famous. She wasn’t a chief executive, politician or celebrity. She was a daughter, mother, niece and friend who was loved ferociously by the people around her. Perhaps that is why this truck moved me so much. It was created because one family could not bear the thought of her disappearing.
More than a decade after Kelly died, her face is still travelling to truck shows. Children still point at the Disney characters. Cameras still come out when the pink MAN enters a paddock. Graham puts it more simply: “Kelly is still out there.” After walking out of RTX in search of a pink truck, I think I understand exactly what he means.
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