Commercial Auto Dealers

Few people are respectful when they see a procession of funeral cars these days. This woman who was involved in a procession of funeral cars tells a story of a person who was both considerate and inconsiderate at the same time.

While in the procession, she noticed a woman approaching the procession. The woman passed a car that was stopped, but she didn’t realize the car was stopped because of the Cadillac hearse and the procession in front of it. Seeing the funeral cars, the woman did the Catholic cross blessing. As a result of taking her hand off the steering wheel, she bumped into a curb.

That seems harmless enough. She was considerate enough to ask a blessing for the mourners. But when she bumped into the curb, she blared her horn at the procession of funeral cars as though her accident was partly their fault.

Can we make a resolution for the New Year? This is a simple one. When you see a procession of funeral cars, can we just pull over and have some consideration for the mourners? It’s more than just a sign of respect for them. Pulling over helps ensure that no accidents occur. How often do you encounter funeral processions anyway? If you think about it and add it all up, pulling over for processions will probably take less than three minutes out of your entire year.

You might see more funeral cars and Cadillac hearses on the roads on New Year’s Eve this year. That’s because several funeral homes and mortuaries across the country are offering free rides in their funeral cars to intoxicated partiers to help everyone get home safely.

This is a good idea for two reasons. Obviously, free rides for intoxicated people are ideal because that keeps them off the roads on the biggest party night of the year. But it also sends a message to people that says: “If you drink and drive, you could end up in the back of these funeral cars lying vertically.”

It’s one thing if you want to drive while intoxicated and put yourself in danger. But when there are other people on the roads, there is no excuse for drinking and driving. Free rides in funeral cars and other programs that offer free rides to intoxicated people make drinking and driving even more senseless.

We’ve made it through Thanksgiving and Christmas. We just have New Year’s Eve and Day to go. Don’t ruin the holidays by taking a chance behind the wheel after you’ve been drinking. It’s just not worth it.

Hearse dealerships are in the business of providing transportation for the recently departed. As a result, many hearse dealerships reflect on the previous year during this season. Here are a few of the deaths in 2008 that made headlines, touched our hearts and affected us all.

Heath Ledger – This was probably the most surprising death in 2008. With the release of “The Dark Knight” and the other movie Ledger was working on, his death became even more tragic.

Bernie Mac – Who saw this one coming? This comic genius will truly be missed.

Paul Newman – The star of such movies like “Cool Hand Luke,” “The Color of Money” and others left us with his legacy earlier this year.

Estelle Getty – This “Golden Girl” passed away in 2008. I used to watch “Golden Girls” on Saturday nights and still catch it in syndication sometimes simply because of Estelle Getty.

Tim Russert – This surprising death took everybody off guard, especially since it was close to the elections. He would have enjoyed talking to the pundits, politicians and others leading up to Election Day this year.

These are just a few people that we said our final farewells to in 2008 as they took their final ride in a Cadillac hearse. It makes you wonder what’s going to happen in ’09.

Even a real-life Santa Claus cannot escape this life without taking a last ride in a Cadillac hearse.

This story comes from North College Hill near Cincinnati, Ohio. For nearly four decades, Bill Zapf has given out thousands of candy canes to people that visited his decorated him. He did this between Thanksgiving and Christmas every year as people stopped to admire his dazzling light display which he referred to as “the glow.” His display always had more lights “per square foot than any other place in town.” This year, the display had 60,000 bulbs, but they weren’t in a dazzling display. Instead, they spelled out “Bill Zapf, 1940-2008.”

The Cadillac hearse that was used to transport Zapf to his final resting place honored his memory by having antlers mounted on the two side windows and a big red Rudolph-like nose on the front grill. Zapf’s SUV was parked near the Cadillac hearse and it had a family of plastic snowmen in the front seat. The pallbearers even paid their respects at the burial site by wearing Santa hats.

Bill Zapf would’ve been proud of the sendoff he received. To some, he was as real as Santa Claus will ever get. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family this Christmas season.

Whenever the funeral cars and Cadillac hearses drive along Canada’s Highway of Heroes, everybody gets a tear in their eye. The fathers of the fallen soldiers are no exception.

Jerry Diplaros stood out in the bitter cold last week over the Don Valley Parkway to pay his respects to three of Canada’s latest fallen soldiers from the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of those soldiers was his son – Pte. Demetrios Diplaros. He held a picture of his son in his hand as he watched the funeral cars pass by.

“I wasn’t ready for this,” he said as he looked at the photo in his hand. “My boy’s my hero and he always will be.” He went on to say: “Last week, so many people were standing on the bridges and now it’s my turn to pay my respects.”

His niece, Danielle, was in the procession of funeral cars that followed the hearses on the highway. She was so moved by the number of people that lined the roads to pay their respects that she said she’d be at the next repatriation to pay her respects to other soldiers.
My only question is this: Why don’t they have something like this in the United States?

Stealing funeral cars takes guts, but stealing funeral cars from a parking lot while a funeral service is going on inside is even gutsier.

That’s exactly what this Florida man did earlier this week, though. The crime occurred at Gethsemane Missionary Baptist Church. The thief was “tagging along” with a relative who worked for the Eric George Funeral Service, the company that handled the funeral arrangements. But once the casket was moved from the Cadillac hearse into the church, the many jumped in the driver’s seat and headed for home. Once he got there, he told his mom and the rest of his family what he had just done. They must have been so proud!

After grabbing a few things, he got back into the hearse and headed back to the church. Police officers were pursuing the hearse and eventually got the man cornered. While he was still in the driver’s seat, some officers pursued him on foot. He then tried to run over one deputy, resulting in the thief getting a bullet in the right thigh. He then drove the hearse back to the church and ran into the sanctuary where police apprehended him in the middle of the service.

I’m completely speechless about this story. The man wanted a joyride in a hearse. But from there, he tries to run over a police officer? And then he ruins a person’s funeral by running into the sanctuary with police chasing him? That’s not even considering putting his relative’s job in danger who brought him as a tagalong. All I can say is…Wow!

If you know anything about Cadillac hearses and funeral cars, you know that some smaller town once used them for two purposes – transporting dead bodies and transporting bodies in emergency situations, much like ambulances.

This particular story is about a town in North Carolina and the history of the Cadillac hearses in that city. For many years in the 1900s, the town’s four morticians provided ambulance and emergency services for the surrounding county. However, this wasn’t the ideal situation because the emergency services tied up their Cadillac hearses when they needed to transport deceased people. That’s why they talked Wayman C. McCorquodale into taking the ambulance service in 1956.

The next year, McCorquodale added his first new vehicle to his ambulance fleet. He had a crew of six people that operated his emergency services. From there, Cumberland County had its first rescue squad supported by county funding.

Following from that, many improvements and changes went on in the administration of emergency service providers in the area. Today, the health care system in the area continues to serve the members of the community with ambulances instead of Cadillac hearses.

Funeral cars and memorial services are becoming an all-too-common site in Indiana these days. The most recent student death – Taylor Maffett – is the sixth student death in Indiana’s Twin Lakes School District in just 10 weeks. Funeral cars and Cadillac hearses were lined up outside the student’s service last week and school buses even transported students to the service to pay their respects to their classmate.

Maffett was a junior at Twin Lakes High School. She was involved in a car accident in which her car hit a utility pole and a tree near her home early one morning. She died a couple days later from the injuries she sustained in the accident. According to reports from her mom, Maffett was out bowling with her friends on Saturday night. Just before 2:00 AM, Maffett called her mom to let her know she was “just around the corner” and she would be home in a minute. According to the police report, the crash was reported just a couple minutes later.

Taylor Maffett was a huge fan of the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and other music from that time period. She also loved the guitar and had a great deal of musical talent. She will be missed by her family and her classmates.

One of the better used Cadillac hearses you may find at your local hearse dealerships is the 2003 Cadillac Eureka hearse. Here are some things you can expect to find with this popular Cadillac hearse.

• The exterior color is sterling. This is like a pearl color or a whitish-gray color. This gives it a truly unique appearance. The interior is also midnight blue. How’s that for elegance?
• The 2003 Cadillac Eureka hearse comes with driver and passenger side airbags for optimum safety. There are also side airbags for other passengers.
• A dual climate control system allows everybody riding in the hearse to be as comfortable as possible.
• As for brakes, the 2003 Cadillac Eureka hearse has four-wheel disc and ABS.
• Heated mirrors reduce the need for scraping off the ice on those cold and frigid winter mornings.
• A tire pressure monitoring system alerts the driver when the tire pressure needs to be adjusted, reducing the need to check the pressure manually all the time.

These features and so much more make this a great addition to any fleet of Cadillac hearses. Visit your local hearse dealerships for this or similar hearses that meet your needs.

When the Cadillac hearse carrying the body of the former president of Clemson University drove around the campus this week, students saluted the beloved man in a unique way: with Moon Pies and cans of RC Cola.

The RC Cola was a salute to the man – Robert Cook “RC” Edwards – who was president of the university for 20 years between 1959 and 1979. The Moon Pies were a tribute to his wife – Louise – who passed away earlier this year in July. The university’s student government distributed the cakes and sodas to students before the hearse made its way around the campus.

“We just thought it would be a good, simple way for students at Clemson today to join in the celebration of this incredible man’s life,” said the student government president Callie Boyd.

The ceremony for Edwards was held on Clemson’s campus on Monday. Speakers talked about his legacy and how he helped build Clemson University into what it is today. “If you seek the legacy of Robert Cook Edwards, it is certainly in the buildings and the grounds and the master plan of this campus,” said Clemson’s current president Jim Barker. He was a student at CU when Edwards was president.

So have an RC Cola and Moon Pie today in honor of a man that did something for the community in which he lived. We could use more men like him.