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The funeral industry is not immune to the economic downturn that the nation has been experiencing in the last several months. People are choosing to forego some traditional services with funerals in order to save money. Cadillac hearses aren’t as prominent as they once were. Other expensive services are on the decline as well.

The directors at the Stauffer Funeral Home in Maryland are making some changes to cope with the financial effects. “With the changes in the economy,” said G. Douglas Stauffer, co-owner of the funeral home with is son, “funeral homes are not a whole lot different from a business standpoint.” He went on to say this: “Operating costs and overhead are far greater than they were…Contrary to what many people believe, the large profits simply aren’t there.”

While fewer people are choosing the more expensive services, the demand for funerals has remained steady. And although business is still good, directors like Stauffer are on guard for troubled times ahead. Funeral home owners have the salaries of several employees to consider as well as maintenance on their fleets of hearses and funeral cars. Gas prices are also a consideration as they continue to climb. The one thing that saves funeral homes in these trying times, says Terry Connelly, Jr. of Connelly Funeral Home in Essex, is the fact that many people have planned ahead with life insurance and savings.

Fresno, California had a fun and exciting celebration this week commemorating Mardi Gras. The celebration has become a tradition and this year’s party was the 12th annual Mardi Gras parade that went through Fresno’s Tower District. If you were there, you probably saw the festivities, including belly dancers, roller derby teams and “ghoulish undertakers” driving hearses through the streets. The party had something for everyone and everybody had a great time.

“Everyone was just having a really good time, everyone was in a great mood,” said Felix Muzquiz who is involved with the Tower District Marketing Committee.

The real Mardi Gras also took place yesterday. You may have seen some of the same things at that one, too, including Cadillac hearses, purple and gold beads and various floats to celebrate the start of Lent. Lent is a 40-day period in which many people abstain from certain foods or activities until Easter as an act of penance.

It’s great that people can still let loose and let themselves party and have a good time despite the grim economic times the nation is going through. If you don’t learn to have a good time during the troubles, though, you’ll just end up going insane!

These days, everybody is cutting back on costs. Even with funerals, people are looking for ways to economize and spend less money. But even with trying to save money, most people choose to have their loved ones taken to their final resting place in a Cadillac hearse.

Funeral services are an $11 billion industry in this country, according to the national Funeral Directors Association. Although funeral homes and directors are feeling the pinch right now, they expect business to grow in the near future as the U.S. death rate goes from eight people per 1,000 in 2008 to 10.9 per 1,000 in 2040. And nearly all of those families will choose Cadillac hearses for their loved one to be transported in style one last time.

The only thing balancing out the need for Cadillac hearses is the rise of cremations. More and more people are choosing to have their loved ones cremated and put into an urn rather than having them buried in a cemetery. In these cases, the family generally takes the ashes home or has them spread in a certain place that the deceased loved. But even with cremations, many families opt to have the body taken to the cremation facility in a Cadillac hearse.

People will always need funeral services. And as long as there are funeral homes and cemeteries, there will be a need for Cadillac hearses for one last ride in style.

When you see a Cadillac hearse at a school, you know something is up.

A high school in New Jersey recently held a seminar to teach students about the dangers of drinking and driving. The seminar was called “Every 15 Minutes” to bring attention to the fact that someone dies in an alcohol-related accident every 15 minutes.

In addition to parking a Cadillac hearse outside of the school, there were several other displays to help drive the point home to the students. For instance, the cafeteria had a coffin with a mirror on the pillow to remind students of the dangers of drinking and driving. The coffin was donated by the Laurel Funeral Home. Also, the principal of the school dressed as the “grim reaper” and picked random students from various classes one-by-one. The students returned to class with white makeup and black tshirts to symbolize death.

These seem like morbid displays to teach teenagers about drinking and driving, but it’s time somebody does something to get the point across. Too many teenagers with their lives ahead of them end up taking their final ride in hearses before or soon after graduation before even starting to live. Let’s hope programs like this spread and affect as many young people as possible so we don’t have to bury more teenagers because of drinking and driving.

An old Cadillac hearse and haunted house in a small mid-Michigan city has neighbors in an uproar. The attraction has been up since before Halloween and many people in the city of Burton want to see it taken down.

“The Crypt” is like the alter ego of Chemco, the local pool and spa business that sponsors and hosts the haunted attraction each year. It sits near the border of Grand Blanc and Burton, two suburbs of Flint, Michigan. According to city officials, however, the business is not breaking any laws by leaving the attraction the way it is. In fact, some residents are happy about it because it hides some empty houses and other eyesores in the abandoned area.

Other Burton residents aren’t as happy about the hearse and haunted house. “It looks really trashy,” said Jessica Watson, a teen resident of the city. She lives about a mile away from the attraction and hates passing by it every day on her way to school. “If I was just visiting,” she continued, “I’d think they were lazy. It’s a very unattractive building.”

Chemco officials have not commented on the situation. As elaborate as the structures is, they would probably have to start rebuilding it by the time they tore it down anyways. Maybe it wouldn’t be such an issue if they opened up the old Cadillac hearse and the haunted house as a year-round attraction.

In today’s tough economic times, you might think the only two types of businesses doing well are the hearse and funeral business. After all, people cannot avoid dying.

But hearse makers and funeral directors are feeling the current credit crunch as must as the next guy. One of the main things contributing to the downturn in the funeral industry is the fact that more and more people are choosing cremation for their loved ones. A statistic from Minnesota shows that the number of cremations has doubled since the 1990s and that number has even grown significantly since 2007. Cremations are cheaper in so many ways and are the only option for some families these days.

In addition to that, families who choose cremation typically do not need a Cadillac hearse for a funeral procession. Usually, they take the remains in the urn and have a shorter, more informal memorial service. Pennsylvania State Senator Paul Koering, the owner of a local hearse business, feels the pinch. “Obviously,” he said, “if you have your loved one cremated, you don’t need a hearse. I think that in these economic times, people are looking at the cremation option as a way to do the funeral at a lower cost.”

It’s no secret that Americans have an obesity problem. It’s become such an epidemic, in fact, that funeral directors have had to make special accommodations for obese people who die. But are they making larger funeral cars for hearse dealerships, too?

Obesity isn’t just a problem for adults, though. An unprecedented number of kids and teenagers in America are also considered obese. This can lead to health problems at a young age which can cause even more problems as they grow older. There are approximately 400,000 deaths each year attributed to obesity and complications associated with being overweight.

That means casket companies need to make larger caskets to accommodate larger bodies. Goliath Casket in Lynn, Indiana specializes in making oversized coffins. The standard casket size is about 24 inches across, but Goliath Casket makes them up to 44 inches across with extra reinforcements designed to hold 700 pounds. When the company was created in the late 1980s, it was only selling one of these triple-wide caskets each year. However, that number has skyrocketed since then.

How long before Cadillac hearses are no longer able to accommodate these oversized coffins? Will the coffins get much bigger as people grow more and more obese? Will you see modified hearses at your local hearse dealerships designed to carry supersized caskets? Only time will tell.

When you think of hearses, you think of death. Normally, drivers of hearses deal with people who have already passed on. However, this story is about a driver that helped a man live on the way back from dropping off a man who has died.

The story takes place in western Michigan. Steve Langeland was on his way back from dropping a body off when he saw a car that had veered off the road. Upon further inspection, he noticed the driver was slumped over the wheel and he wasn’t breathing and he had no pulse. The man was Paul Edelman of Holland Township.

“He needed help and no one was there,” explained Langeland. “So you just do what you need to do.” After determining the man had no pulse, Langeland performed CPR. It wasn’t part of his training. After all, the clients he deals with are usually past the stage where CPR can help them. They are usually ready for their final ride in a Cadillac hearse. Langeland, however, learned CPR 17 years ago in order to get out of a physical education requirement in college.

About the same time as he began CPR, an ambulance drove by. He flagged it down and the paramedics began working on Edelman. Before long, he was breathing again.

One of the last places you’d expect to see a brawl is in the parking lot of a morgue. But in Malta, that’s exactly what happened when a couple drivers of hearses and other people got into a shouting argument over parking.

The incident occurred about mid-afternoon at St. Luke’s Hospital in August of 2006. Undertakers were unloading four corpses from their hearses to take them to their respective funerals. Another car was moving in reverse and almost hit one of the hearses. The driver of the hearse that was almost hit shouted at the offending driver. That started a fight that involved two families of the undertakers and their employees. In all, about 15 people were involved in the brawl.

The trials were recently completed. Two of the undertakers involved in the brawl were found guilty and given fines because they injured rival undertaker Louis Borg. They were also found guilty of disobeying police orders and threatening others in the area. Another undertaker was “conditionally discharged.”

This may have happened all the way over in Malta, but I wouldn’t have been surprised in the least had this happened in the United States around a bunch of Cadillac hearses . It just seems like people are losing respect for even the things we once held most sacred in our society.

A recent display at the White Family Funeral Home in Canada recently exhibited a display that explained the evolution of hearses. Your local hearse dealerships have a similar display in that they have various models for sale, both old and new, that are available for sale.

Some people may not know that hearses were not always motorized. Before the 20th century, hearses consisted of a horse-drawn carriage that transported the deceased from one place to another. Before that, pallbearers were called upon to do the same job, but that was when churches and cemeteries were usually built on the same land.

By 1913, the motorized hearse was becoming more commonplace as people were traveling farther and farther. Before long, horse-drawn funeral coaches were obsolete.

You won’t find any horse-drawn funeral coaches at your local hearse dealerships. You probably won’t even find some of the earliest hearses there. You will likely find, however, Cadillac hearses dating back to the 1970s and possibly even earlier. You’ll also find many new hearses with the latest features that you simply can’t do without if you are running a funeral business in today’s modern society. See how far hearses have come in recent years and get a glimpse into their future by visiting one of your local hearse dealerships today!