Heritage Coach Dealer Blog USA

We are very proud to announce the launch of our new email Insider Program. Our readers can now sign up for access to exclusive savings and incentives offered to members only. This means coupons and special offers on new and pre-owned hearses and limousines. It’s a free program that can save you hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars on vehicles, as well as, parts & service.

Each month we will send out 1-2 emails to our Insiders. We will not overload you with emails and you can opt-out at anytime. We also will not share your information with outside parties. As part of each email, we will inform you on the latest Heritage Happenings, as well as, link you to our social media sites and provide you with savings coupons. Basically everything that you need to stay connected to Heritage Coach will be delivered to your email inbox on a monthly basis. All you have to do is click the image below, enter your name and email address, and click submit to sign up. It’s that easy.

What do you think about this new program? Does it sound intriguing? Let us know your thoughts by adding a comment to the post below. We want to continue to interact and listen to our readers so that we can improve our offerings to you. The more feedback you provide, the better informed we’ll be on your needs. We can then make improvements to this new program and to other future programs that may be in development. We hope that you’ll take some time out to give us your opinion and we look forward to interacting with you through our great new email Insider program.

Recently, an autistic boy in Sydney, N.S. died in a snowstorm after following his dog Chance into the woods. Search teams weren’t able to find him until it was too late, but Chance stayed faithfully by the boy’s side, trying to keep him warm in a futile fight against a snowstorm and the hypothermia that eventually set in.

At the funeral procession, among the hearses and funeral cars that traveled to the memorial, there was one whose passenger had four legs, a tail, and mournful eyes that seemed entirely in keeping with the tone of the day. Dogs have been known to lie on their master’s graves and return time and again to keep them company – but how many have actually attended the procession?

It’s a touching thought that when a community gathers together in mourning for a little boy who could not even cry out for help due to his autism, an allowance could be made for the pet who was so faithful to his master, and who tried to save him. Many funeral homes might not have allowed Chance to ride in the hearse, but they recognized that he had an important role in this little boy’s life and deserved to be a part of the memorial too.

Anyone who has ever driven funeral cars or hearses has surely had rules and regulations to follow about what is and is not acceptable within the bounds of the car. Some of those rules are simply practical, such as not eating food in the car because it might leave crumbs. Others might be more for the sake of the solemnity of the car’s task, such as not honking the horn because such a loud noise might feel disrespectful to the mourners.

Though I haven’t personally asked all the funeral car drivers out there, I’m sure many of them have rules about pets in their vehicles. I’m equally sure that almost all of them would say that they would make an exception for a situation such as this one, and a dog such as Chance. Particularly when your industry is a realm all about compassion and respect, it seems almost essential that sometimes funeral cars must give way to human emotions.

So here’s a question from us at Heritage Coach for all of you out there: when is it appropriate to make exceptions to rules regarding hearses and funeral cars out of consideration for the family and for the deceased? What circumstances would you make an exception for? And when would you say that funeral cars deserve respect too, and that certain rules need to be obeyed to make sure they stay that way?

We’d love to hear your stories about any times when funeral cars have made exceptions or chosen not to.

Here at the Heritage Coach Company, we offer a great certified pre-owned vehicle program for both hearses and limousines. We are dedicating this post to helping funeral directors and funeral home owners understand how we certify our pre-owned hearses and limousines, so that they can feel confident when purchasing certified pre-owned vehicles from us.

Each of our used hearses and limousines go through a rigorous 116 Point Quality Assurance Inspection. Only if they pass will they be considered a certified pre-owned vehicle. Our highly trained technicians recondition each vehicle to our exacting standards. On top of that, each of our certified pre-owned limousines and hearses are backed by a 3-month/3,000 mile warranty.

In order to get a sense of our 116 Point Quality Assurance Inspection, check out the checklist below.

This checklist outlines the main categories of our 116 Point Quality Assurance Inspection. Click the checklist to see how each of the categories breaks down into individual inspection areas. For example, under the first category, Road Test, there are 21 tests that we perform to ensure the vehicle will meet the standards of funeral directors and funeral home owners. Some of those tests are:

• Checking the vehicle’s history
• Ensuring there is an owner’s manual for the vehicle
• Confirming the seat belts function properly
• Confirming the speedometer works

These are just some of the 21 individual tests we perform just for the Road Test category. Again, click the Certified Inspection Checklist image above to see the full checklist. You can also find out more about the program by going to our website and clicking “Certified Program” from the “Parts & Service” drop-down menu.

We hope that you find this post valuable when trying to understand our process for certifying pre-owned hearses and limousines. Over the coming weeks, we will be unveiling some other great programs for funeral directors and funeral home owners. Check back to our blog to learn more. For those of you wanting a sneak peek, I can tell you that one of our great new programs will be the ability to sign up for a new mailing list, which will give you exclusive information on vehicles and specials. We hope you’ll check back with us again soon.

Funeral homes across the country are adding video equipment to their facilities in an effort to give family members overseas a chance to say goodbye. One funeral home owner in the Twin Tiers region – Brad Perkins – is joining the trend.

Perkins, owner of the Dryden area Perkins Funeral Home, recently invested in some state-of-the-art video equipment to allow family members overseas to view the funeral of a loved one. During the holiday season, Perkins is offering this service for free for military families. Perkins is the son of a WWII soldier so he knows the comfort of instant communication during the most tragic events in a family’s life. That’s not something he had growing up because communication with soldiers overseas took so long.

“To realize that those messages took 10 days to two months to arrive, now we can do something that’s virtually live, that’s right away. We can record a message today, and it can be seen 40 seconds later in Iraq and Afghanistan,” he explained.

Is your funeral home equipped with video equipment to serve those family members who cannot make it to the funeral services? If not, you may be missing out!

Mock funerals tend to be the way to get attention and make your cause known these days. The students at UNC-Asheville recognize this and used a mock funeral to bring awareness to the cancelled EARN scholarship for students at the school.

The Students for a Democratic Society held the demonstration earlier this month as part of a “national day of action for education rights” that was initiated by the Network to Fight for Economic Justice, a new group on campus. During the demonstration, pallbearers carried fake caskets to the “quad” while making stops along the way. At the end of the journey, there was a tombstone which remained there for the rest of the week to commemorate the end of the EARN scholarship’s availability for UNCA students because it was “struck down by the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen.”

More than 10,000 students in the state received the EARN scholarship to attend college. It was designed to help lower-income students and families afford the high cost of going to school. However, the scholarship was cut at the state level because of budget shortfalls, which the Students for a Democratic Society do not agree with because many of the top administrators are still bringing in more than $100,000 per year.

Securing financing for anything has been really tough lately for small businesses and consumers. Knowing this, we want to make sure that we are there to support our customers when they begin the financing process. On our website, we have financial resources and tools designed to make the hearse and limousine buying process less stressful and more successful for our customers. You can fill out an online finance/lease application, check out different lease options, and calculate your monthly payment with our online finance calculator. Click the image below to see how it works.

If you’d rather work with someone from Heritage Coach, our sales team will assist you throughout the entire financing process. There are several ways you can structure your financing in order to comfortably afford a hearse or limousine. Our consultants can guide you through the pros and cons of these various options. Basically, there are three main types of lease agreements that we deal with on a daily basis for our customers. They are:

• Straight Lease
• Lease-Purchase
• Trac Lease

Each lease type is described on our website under Finance & Lease Information.

If you’re in the market for a hearse or limousine, but think that you’ll never be able to secure financing in this economy, definitely check out our website. If you’d rather talk with someone face-to-face, don’t hesitate to give us a call at 610-862-0560 to setup an appointment with a member of our sales team, or simply stop by our Conshohocken, PA location.

If you have attended several military funerals in recent months, you may have noticed a couple of them playing “Taps” over a tape recorder. That just does not have the same effect as hearing it live, but a shortage of bugle players have made the taped version a necessity for families who want to hear it at the ceremony.

In Long Island, New York, Louis DiLeo is the only bugle player available in the southern region of NY’s Military Forces Honor Guard to play the touching notes at services for fallen military personnel. Due to the shortage, he is keeping quite busy traveling to various funerals in the area to give families their desire to hear “Taps” played live on a bugle. According to DiLeo, he started doing this more than three years ago and he has not missed a day during that time.

Are you a bugler who is able to travel around your area and provide this last tribute to fallen soldiers? If so, please contact your local VFW office or military reserve to let them know. It’s a great way to spend your time while lightening the load for the few buglers who are left.

You know things are getting bad these days when thieves are targeting the funeral cars of mourners during a graveside service.

That’s exactly what Stacy Egan and Thomas Beach did recently. They were arrested for stealing anything they found in the funeral cars at a cemetery while the owners of those cars were saying goodbye to a loved one.

“These two had no regard for people who are grieving,” said a spokesperson for Sheriff Tom Dart. After being arrested, the two admitted to some unsolved thefts that occurred over the summer at cemeteries. The two thieves have been charge with stealing items like GPS devices, iPods, purses, wallets, loose change and more. However, the authorities let them go after they posted 10 percent of the $75,000 bond.

With the economy getting worse every day, you’re not even safe when you are at the cemetery grieving the loss of you friends and loved ones. These types of crimes are going to become more common as people have fewer financial resources. Be sure to lock your cars when you are parked at the cemetery and anywhere else for that matter. You never know when you are going to be the victim of one of these thieves.

If you have ever been to a traditional funeral, you have probably noticed hymns playing in the background or someone may have even sung a hymn during the actual service. Hymns are very popular at funerals, but do you know why?

Music has an uncanny way of expressing how we feel when we are dealing with grief. By expressing our feelings, certain songs tend to be soothing and comforting when we are feeling at our lowest. In addition to that, hymns tend to be familiar to people, even those who rarely step foot inside a church.

But more pop songs are being used at funerals these days in place of hymns or even in addition to hymns. Here are some of the most popular songs played at funerals:

Wind Beneath My Wings – Better Midler
Candle in the Wind – Elton John
How Great Thou Art
It Is Well With My Soul
Tears in Heaven – Eric Clapton
Amazing Grace
Rock of Ages
Go Rest High on that Mountain – Ricky Skaggs
…and several others.

Do you see a song on this list that you would want played at your funeral? What song would you like played or sung at your funeral?

Have you heard the one about the 16 year old girl who haunts a local funeral home? If not, click the image above to play the video. With Halloween right around the corner, this is our time of year. Our time to shine. When you sell new and used hearses, you get excited around Devil’s Night.

When I watched the video of the 16 year old girl, it gave me the idea of setting up a haunted funeral home, similar to a haunted house on Halloween. Have any of the funeral directors out there reading this blog ever turned your funeral home into a haunted funeral home? If so, I hope you’ll share your story with us in the comments section of this blog. If you haven’t tried this, perhaps you should? I think it would be fun and it would definitely get your name out there in the local community.

If you do decide to setup a haunted funeral home, check out our post on renting a hearse for Halloween.

Happy Halloween from the Heritage Coach Company.