You have to be available 24 hours a day, every day of the year, and be able to collect a dead body within one hour.

Those are some of the terms of an ACT government request for tender to collect and deliver the hundreds of bodies the ACT Coroner must examine annually.

In contrast to the usual hearse ride on the day of a funeral, any windows of vehicles used for moving bodies for the coroner must be opaque. Credit:Andrew Sheargold

Applicants must be a member of a specified funeral directors association or meet the same accreditation, but there are some differences from the service delivered by a standard hearse.

Vehicles – which can't be marked with the business's name – must block any external vision into the body storage area.