It’s January 2014. We have a brand new expedition truck and plan to travel to errrr… well… everywhere really! It’s going to be our home for all terrains, all conditions – it’s going to become a proper team-member with a personality. Here’s (a short version of) the story of creating an identity for our new home, how ‘the Truck‘ became ‘Cuthbert‘.

(click here for internal pics, here for tech-stuff and here for how we chose this truck).

The Logo

We had decided on a logo for him/her/it. Bearing in mind that we had spent the last five years in the Middle East, travelling extensively around deserts and dunes, we thought that a camel would be a suitable logo for our new home (after all… our ‘desert money’ saved from working in Qatar had paid for this new venture!).

So the logo came first, but no name yet.

The Motto

Next, our friend and fellow overland-travel enthusiast, Greg Smith in Doha bought us the appropriate farewell gift of a decal to put on the back of our new truck: “Keep Calm and Engage Diff Lock”.   Spot on, Greg! This motto will definitely stick for us!

So now we have a logo and a motto, but still no name.

The Paint-job

We were next contemplating what sort of design to put on the side of ‘the truck’.  To comply with the law in several African countries, we needed to have a reflective yellow stripe down the full length of the vehicle. But a single yellow stripe on a smurf-blue background, looked a bit commercial (and quite a lot naff) for a camper-van on an overland journey across Africa. The problem was to find an attractive, subtle and appropriate design for the side of the truck, that was not spoilt by the rather ugly but essential, vivid-yellow stripe.

Julie’s brother Ben Taylor is a talented graphic designer with an instinctive eye for design. When presented with our problem, it took Ben merely seconds to come up with the idea of the elephant family design that Cuthbert is proudly sporting today!

Many thanks for this design Ben, we love it!  And it gets lots of admiring compliments.

So we now have a logo, a motto and a design. But still no name for ‘the truck’!!

Finally…!

What to call it?  We can’t just call it ‘Truck’. Especially as our surname is Tuck. It would be cruel to name our new family member: ‘Truck Tuck‘.  We pondered various ideas and options, but nothing that we thought of seemed right.

Finally, when we were a few days into our European test-trip visiting the new mansion of our friends Paul and Mags in Leipzig, we were collectively pondering the dilemma over a bottle (or two) of wine. “Looks like a Cuthbert to me” said Mags. Brilliant!  By jove, she’s got it!  ‘Cuthbert’ it is!

We now had a logo, a motto, a design and….. last but not least….. a name!

On return to England at the end of the European tester-trip, Cuthbert was properly ‘baptised’ and toasted in that well-known truck-christening town of Newark, Nottinghamshire. Our friends Leon and Nicole kindly provided the champagne and hospitality for the ceremony!

Cuthbert was now ready to tour Africa with his identity properly in place 🙂

2022 Update

Eight years on the road and living in Cuthbert, we’re still very happy. His personality has developed over the years and he’s very much part of our family. Yes, his paintwork has a few (actually, a lot) ‘adventure stripes’ from bashing through dense bush in various remote locations around the world. But given the punishing conditions of extreme heat and cold, extended hours of bright UV light and sharp ice particles over two Canadian winters, the stickers’ staying-power has been impressive. Only now have we had to replace the colourful camel sticker and all the others are still good.

Click here for pictures inside Cuthbert.      Click here for Cuthbert’s Technical Details

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