Heritage Coach Dealer Blog USA

“Mourners” in a central New Jersey town lined up funeral cars and hearses to say goodbye to a local hospital last week.

More than 200 citizens and city activists gathered around Muhlenberg Regional Medical Center and held a mock funeral to give the 131-year-old hospital a proper sendoff. Area residents wanted to say a special goodbye to the hospital because it served them so well for the past several decades. People were born there. People died there. People were even cured there. “This moment was somber,” said Lawrence Hamm, chairman for the People’s Organization for Progress, “because we came to bury a hospital that served so many so well.”

The mock funeral took place at the parking lot of the hospital, located at the corner of Randolph Road and Park Avenue. More than 75 cars and hearses surrounded the area. Drivers honked their horns and flashed their lights to show their appreciation for everything the hospital and its staff had done for their families throughout the years. The conclusion of the ceremony occurred when one of the hearses, a long white one, lead the line of cars to the nearby JFK Medical Center in Edison and then to the Plainfield City Hall.

Funeral cars in Islington earlier this week were ticketed when they pulled over to mourn the death of a 16-year-old murder victim from the community, Ben Kinsella. The young boy was stabbed repeatedly in the early morning hours of June 29. He was taken to a local hospital, but he died soon after.

At the scene of the murder, friends and family members created a shrine to the young boy. Mourners flocked to the area for weeks after the incident to pay their respects to the Kinsella family. But while they had their funeral cars parked nearby, Islington traffic wardens were passing out tickets.

One woman stopped to pay her respects as she was confronted by a traffic warden. “He said that I couldn’t park on a double-yellow,” she explained. But according to her, his response was, “I don’t care what shrine it is, you can’t be parked on a double-yellow.” She is appealing her ticket as many other area residents with similar citations are doing.

One neighbor who lived close to the shrine noticed that traffic wardens were almost keeping watch of the shrine so they could pounce on drivers as soon as they parked. “To me,” she said, “they were young cashing in on the death of a young man.”

The latest news about the situation is that these traffic citations will not be enforced. But it raises an important question: Funeral cars or not, should people be allowed to park against the rules to pay their respects at a site of mourning? I mean, we see these shrines set up all over the highway here in the United States. Should mourners be allowed to pull over and pay their respects even though it could risk their safety and the safety of other drivers? What do you think?

Residents of a small Huntersville, North Carolina neighborhood don’t mind a person making a living by selling hearses for sale. But they are mad at the owner of a home who has made his property an eyesore with a number of dilapidated used hearses for sale.

In addition to being an eyesore, the yard that contains the hearses for sale in question is also breaking laws because it is not zoned for such a business. As a result, the owner is racking up fines in excess of $10,000. The town is also filing a lawsuit against the absentee owner in an effort to collect on the fines. As the town planner stated, the fine isn’t to generate income for the town. Instead, the fines are used as a method to make homeowners comply with local laws and ordinances. In this case, no more than two unregistered vehicles can be parked at a home.

The hearses for sale have been parked all over the Pine Knoll neighborhood property, both on the lawn and in the driveway. These funeral cars are in clear view of passing traffic, but attempts to contact the homeowner have gone unanswered. And the only way the town officials can actually remove the hearses for sale from the yard is to foreclose on the home and become the owner. That’s a last resort, according to one official.

Whenever people see a procession of hearses go by, they stop and take notice. That’s why funeral directors in Indiana’s Marion County offered their hearses and funeral cars to the city to promote the “Stop the Violence – Peace in the Streets” campaign earlier this month.

Indianapolis just suffered its worth month in five years in terms of homicides. On the last day of July, the police were investigating the 18th homicide in the city. That pushes the county’s total number of homicides for the year-to-date to 71, one more than last year’s figures for the same time period. That’s why organizers and concerned citizens felt the need to do something to help people understand the seriousness of death and violence. “The overall purpose is to promote peace in the streets and to show the community, especially the young people, that death is final,” stated one of the organizers of the event.

The impressive sight of about 20 hearses left the town’s Glendale Town Center at about 5:30 PM. Funeral directors drove those hearses on a route that covered more than 30 miles through the eastern region of Indianapolis. It took little more than an hour, but citizens noticed the symbolism and took notice.

Let’s hope it just makes people think a little more before they engage in violent activities from now on.

Have you ever seen a procession of funeral cars in which a beloved pet was riding along with the family? It probably doesn’t happen too often. For some families, however, animal companions are just as important as sons or daughters. As such, they ride along with the bereaved in the family funeral cars on the way to the gravesite.

Animal companions are becoming more and more common at funeral services and ceremonies. Currently, there are more than 350 million animal companions in the United States. About 61 percent of American households have a pet. Thirty-nine percent of homes have a dog and 32 percent have a cat. There are also many other pets, including rabbits, hamsters and reptiles that people enjoy having as a companion. These pets become members of the household and form bonds with the family.

When a member of the family dies, pets grieve just as much as the other family members. If the person that died was the primary person in the pet’s life, that grief is even greater. When my dad died, his two dogs looked all over for him. Every time a car pulled into the driveway, they ran to the back door in hopes that it was him. Unfortunately, they were a little too wild to allow in the funeral cars with the family. But during his last years, these two dogs were just as much a part of his family as anybody else. It would’ve been nice if they could’ve said goodbye to him one last time the way we did.

If you’ve ever been interested in buying one of the hearses for sale that you see in the paper or at a dealership, you may not have ever considered getting one customized. But hearses for sale can be made to fit your needs just like any other type of car. For instance, have you ever thought about buying one of these funeral cars and getting it plated with armor?

That’s exactly what the MacNeille company can do. This company specializes in armor plating and covering vehicles in a protective shell for whatever reason. They’ve plated police cars, ambulances, military vehicles and many more. I’m not sure if they’ve actually had many requests from people to plate one of the hearses for sale that they bought, but there’s a first time for everything, right?

MacNeille began customizing and plating cars in 1912 and has since become the leader in the industry. The company is based in the UK, but they serve customers internationally. The current facility has more than nine acres of space and more than 300 employees that are ready to add armor and other security features to the car of your choice.

One way to be unique is to buy one of the hearses for sale in your area and use it as a personal vehicle. But if you want to be truly unique, why not consider getting it customized and armor-plated? There aren’t many people that can compete with that!

If you’re an Elvis fan like me, you probably start thinking about his funeral this time of year. You start looking at the pictures of the hearses that lined the streets during the procession. You might even wonder a few things about his funeral. As luck would have it, our recent road trip took us by The King’s old home – Graceland. While I was there, I pictured the hearses that lined the streets following his funeral. That got me to think even more about what happened at his funeral. So I decided to look up some information and give you some highlights as well.

The Eulogy
Jackie Kahane gave the eulogy at Elvis’s funeral. He was a comedian that opened up for Elvis many, many times when he was playing in Vegas. He was also the person that announced the famous phrase – “Ladies and Gentlemen, Elvis has left the building.” Kahane passed away in March 2001.

The Pallbearers
The pallbearers that served at Elvis Presley’s funeral were Lamar Fike, George Klein, Joe Esposito, Dr. Nichopoulous, Gene Smith, Billy Smith, Charlie Hodges and Jerry Schilling.

The Picture
The National Enquirer paid one of Presley’s cousins nearly $20,000 for a photograph of Elvis inside the casket. He had to do it secretively, but it appeared on the cover of the tabloid and made that particular issue the fastest and bestselling issue of all time.

The Mourners
In many of the pictures of the procession, you can see a large number of hearses and funeral cars lining the streets of Memphis. The hearse that carried Presley’s body was sold several years later and eventually caught fire and burned up.

The Grave
Elvis was first buried next to his mother at Forest Hill Cemetery in Memphis. However, after someone attempted to steal his body, he and his mother were moved to a more secure setting inside Graceland in the Meditation Gardens.

Amidst the funeral cars, flowers and other traditions of today’s funeral services, there is a certain procedure to follow to ensure an ethical and respectful ceremony. Sometimes, though, the funeral director fails to conduct a service in this manner. That’s where the Funeral Ethics Association, or FEA, can help.

Before I tell you what the FEA actually does, I have a story that relates. About 12 years ago, my uncle passed away. Although it was never officially declared, we think he committed suicide because he was running his car on a cold night in a closed garage. But either way, the family didn’t want any of the speakers during the ceremony to discuss that. The minister did a great job of skirting the issue. After his eulogy, though, the funeral director stood up and said, “This is an especially grievous death because it’s a suicide.”

If that was the only thing wrong, it might not have been so bad. But the funeral director did other things that we didn’t appreciate. He didn’t provide funeral cars for the family to get to the gravesite. Family members had to drive themselves to the grave instead of mourning in the back of the customary funeral cars that are designed for their convenience. He didn’t oversee the embalming process and blood settled in various places on the body as a result of shoddy workmanship. He also didn’t have working bathrooms during the days of the visitation and the ceremony. These and other problems are exactly why my aunt contacted the FEA the day after the funeral. I’ll tell you what happened from there on Wednesday.

Have you ever wondered how different cultures say goodbye to their deceased loved ones? The Japanese culture is unique in the way that they have funerals. In case you’ve never been to a Japanese funeral, here are some facts about the ceremony and rituals associated with it.

Most Japanese funerals don’t involve funeral cars or a procession to the cemetery. Instead, the body of the deceased is cremated on the day of the ceremony. In the crematorium, the family and friends typically gather for a small meal. Once the body is cremated and cooled, the people attending the ceremony pick the small bone fragments from the ash and pass them to each other using chopsticks.

Buddhist monks then conduct the actual funeral ceremony. The ceremony usually follows traditional Buddhist customs. Guests must pay 20,000 yen to the immediate family and they then receive a small gift of thanks. The family then has another meal following the ceremony.

Following the ceremony, the family keeps the urn at their house for 35 days. During that time, they burn incense around the clock. They also have many visitors during this time. The visitors can also burn an incense stick out of respect for the deceased. When the 35 days has passed, the family buries the urn in a Buddhist cemetery.

Being a funeral director is, in many ways, an occupation that many folks just don’t understand. Unfortunately, they can’t get beyond thoughts of loss, and rarely take the time to think about life as a funeral director.

One of the things that people outside of the funeral industry rarely consider is the gas mileage of a hearse. Funeral coaches are sizable cars, and they require quite a bit of gas to get them from here to there.

Take, for example, the 2008 Cadillac Funeral Coach. This Cadillac Hearse gets around 13 miles per gallon in town, or 18 miles per gallon on the highway. Of course, most of the miles you put on your Cadillac hearse are going to be in town miles.

There are some ways you can improve the fuel economy of your hearse, however. For starters, you can make sure your tires are always inflated to the right level, and not over- or under- inflated. Keeping nice, newer tires on your hearse is probably good for business, as well. Regularly changing the air filter in your Cadillac Hearse should help maximize fuel economy, too.

While you can’t really do anything about the fact that you’re doing so much city driving instead of highway driving in your hearse, taking these couple of small measures can help increase your mileage, at least a little bit.