Heritage Coach Dealer Blog USA

Hearses and funeral cars are usually used to solemnly take deceased people to their final resting place peacefully and without incident. But that’s not exactly what happened in this case.

Lawrence Epps, the director of a Lake Wales funeral home near Tampa Bay, received several reprimands, sanctions and citations earlier this month for keeping a man in the corner of the facility for months. The findings occurred with a state inspector arrived and noticed an unmistakable odor throughout the facility. When she asked Epps to unzip a body bag he had lying on the floor, dozens of flies were released and she saw mold, maggots and other insects covering a decomposing corpse.

The body of the man was lying there since late December. Epps said he did not embalm him because he received no money from the family for his services. He has been disciplined before for doing underhanded things, too. In 1996, he wrote a bad check to pay for a biomedical waste permit for his facility. Two years later, he fraudulently transferred a real estate title and was fined $5,000. For this offense, formal charges will be filed in the next few days and he will undergo a hearing to determine what his punishment should be.

A few months ago, we posted a blog about how thugs and thieves are targeting funeral cars while they are parked in cemeteries. Since the owners are focusing on the service or spending time with the memory of their loved one, thieves find unattended funeral cars to be great targets. Here are some things you can do to make your unattended car less of a target and a waste of time for would-be robbers.

Keep your doors locked. If your doors are locked, the thieves typically need to break your window to get in and make a quick getaway. In a quiet cemetery, however, this would create too much noise. As a result, it is too risky for thieves to do it and they will likely move to the next car.

Leave your valuables at home or hidden. Thieves generally will not break into your vehicle if there is nothing valuable inside. After all, what’s the benefit for them? Hide your valuable items under the seat or in the trunk if you cannot leave them at home.

Install a car alarm. Noise is the enemy for car thieves. The more noise your car will make, the less of a target it will become.

Use these tips when parking your funeral cars on a cemetery road and thieves will be more likely to walk past your car when they are looking for a quick payday.

Have you ever worried about what the planet is going to be like after you die? If so, there are things you can do to contribute your little part to its sustainability.

Eco-friendly funerals and memorials are becoming quite popular in today’s funeral industry. One way directors and other funeral-related facilities are helping is by using more efficient hearses and funeral cars for their services. But that’s not all.

The number of cremations has been on the rise in the last few years. Surviving loved ones find places to spread the ashes where they will help fertilize the vegetation or they will often find places where the ashes will not harm the environment. In addition to being a great way to help the environment after your death, cremations are also much less expensive than traditional burials. In some instances, they may even be about one-tenth of the price of a traditional burial.

If cremation is not for you, however, you can still get buried without leaving an extra large carbon footprint. Many funeral homes across the country now specialize in “green” burials in which you can be buried in an open field.

Do you have any ideas to make your funeral greener? Or do you prefer the traditional burial that we have come to know today? Let us know your thoughts below.

These days, our pets are a part of the family. Many people spend lots of money on pet carriers just so they can take their pet with them wherever they go. For some, pets are like children. That’s why having one’s pet ride along in the funeral cars with the families is becoming more and more common.

In the United States, there are more than 300 million animal companions. That’s a huge number considering there is roughly 300 million people in the country. According to reports, more than 60 percent of homes in the United States have a beloved pet. Nearly 40 percent of homes in the nation have a dog while more than 30 percent have a cat. Other pets are also represented in households, including hamsters, rabbits and reptiles.

Believe it or not, pets grieve when a member of a household dies. Many times, they may grieve even more because they do not understand what is happening. For them, it is just a traumatic experience that they do not understand. That’s why some families allow them to ride in the funeral cars alongside their beloved friend so they can say goodbye in their own little way.

Do you have pets that would miss you when you pass away? Do you know anybody who loves their pet so much that they would want them in the funeral cars as they went to their final burial place?

As a society, we have grown accustomed to seeing all the traditional sites that go along with a funeral. Processions of funeral cars, steel caskets and other things have become commonplace when a loved one passes away. But today’s customary funeral is fading fast and it is being replaced by burials of several decades ago.

“What people have to get their minds wrapped around is, this is really traditional burial, and it’s how most of humanity has cared for its dead for thousands of years,” said Joe Sehee, the founder and director of the Green Burial Council. “There was never a death industry until 100 years ago, and many of us are trying to de-industrialize it at this point with green burial.” He went on to say that today’s “death industry” is based on a “skewed business model.”

For now, funeral cars and other modern conveniences are common during a service. As things change and become more eco-friendly, however, funeral cars and hearses may become more fuel-efficient and other considerations may be made to reduce one’s carbon footprint upon death. Are you thinking of a “greener” burial when you die or are you going to have a modern funeral like the ones we have come to know today?

It seems like shooting deaths are becoming more and more common these days. Just a couple weeks ago, thousands gathered in Oakland, California to say goodbye to several fallen police officers who gave their life while on duty. Just last week, funeral cars were plentiful in Pittsburgh from people paying their respects to three more officers slain in the line of duty.

The funeral cars gathered at the Petersen Center in Pittsburgh for Officers Stephen Mayhle, Eric Kelly and Paul Sciullo II. When the pallbearers carried the caskets of the soldiers into the center, the hundreds of officers in attendance from area police departments saluted them after standing outside at attention for almost two hours. It was a touching display to say the least.

“This shows the support for policing the community, and brothers supporting brothers,” said Officer Stephen Carpenter from the Toronto Police Service. “It doesn’t surprise me, the support here.” He and some coworkers made the five hour drive to pay their respects to fellow officers.

The procession had more than 1,000 funeral cars and police vehicles following the hearses to the Petersen Center on the University of Pittsburgh’s upper campus. It was a great sendoff to three men who gave their lives protecting our community.

Brewster High School in Southeast, New York was the setting for a sad demonstration of something that happens all too often on the roads today. Firefighters and other emergency workers in the area staged a mock crash that resulted in a hearse pulling up to take the driver on her last ride. It was a demonstration that showed students the dangers of talking on their cell phones while driving.

Any time you want to make a point, funeral cars and hearses are a great way to get somebody’s attention. In this case, the students at the high school watched from atop a hill. The firefighters cut the roof off of one car to get the mock victim out as fake blood pooled on the ground around one driver.

The girl that was taken away from the “accident” was covered in a sheet and placed in a hearse by employees of Beecher Funeral Home.

“I think it’s good for everyone to come out and see what can happen,” said one student who witnessed the demonstration. “Hopefully, it teaches us to driver safer.”

This may have been just a demonstration about what can happen when teenagers use a cell phone behind the wheel, but people are taken away in hearses all the time because they think they can multitask while driving. Don’t let this be you. Concentrate on the road when you are driving and don’t become a statistic or the subject of a demonstration like this.

You’ve probably seen several hearses over the course of your lifetime. Most of them have probably been black, but you may have seen white ones and maybe even some gray ones. Here are some facts about hearses, the symbolism of the color and other things you may not have known about these funeral cars before.

• Hearses in western culture are generally black because that is the color that symbolizes mourning. Some funeral homes use white hearses to symbolize a “new life,” but white and gray hearses are rare.
• The term “hearse” has been used since the 1600s.
• Hearses in other cultures tend to be different colors. In eastern cultures, for example, white and gold hearses are common. They may also have lavish decorations.
• Hearses generally are not used to pick up corpses. A large cargo fan is typically used and the hearse is then used once the body is in a coffin.
• Hearses are built on the same platforms as luxury vehicles. Manufacturers reinforce the body and add a more powerful engine to accommodate the extra weight and stress and for the purposes of helping them last longer.

These are just a few facts about hearses and their mystique. You can learn more about them by going to local hearse dealerships and checking them out in person.

With a death toll of more than 270 and rising, funeral cars in the Italian town of L’Aquila have begun taking the dead to their final resting places. Today, funerals are scheduled to begin for people who were killed during one of the most devastating earthquakes to ever hit the area. Because of the nature of the funerals, the Vatican granted a dispensation that allowed a funeral Mass on Good Friday for many of the known victims.

In addition to the dead, about 30,000 residents of the area are homeless and thousands of people are lining up for food and water. There are still 15 people missing in the destruction and chaos as rescue workers continue to search for them and anyone else who may be alive in the rubble. Officials say it will likely be a couple months before they know the extent of the damage.

“For now, the needs are basic. The people in the camps, they don’t have toothbrushes, they don’t have toothpaste,” said the mayor of the city.

The 6.3 earthquake occurred in L’Aquila and surrounding towns in central Italy on Monday. It was felt for more than 230 square miles. It was the worst earthquake in Italy in the last three decades. As a result, funeral cars and rescue workers have their jobs cut out for them in the days and weeks to come in the destructive aftermath. Keep the victims, their families and the helpers in your thoughts and prayers.

With the recent rash of mass shootings increasing the need for hearses across the United States, one cannot help but wonder if there is a pattern. Many columnists and bloggers are saying the economy is a common denominator in all of these incidents.

In Binghamton, New York, a 41-year-old man busted into the American Civic Association last week and killed 13 people before turning the gun on himself. In Pittsburgh, a man shot and wounded three police officers who were responding to a domestic disturbance call at the man’s house. The list of incidents could go on, but suffice it to say that 44 people have been killed in five separate incidents across the nation in the last month and researchers say the economic downturn could be the motivating factor.

In the case of the Binghamton shooter, the man had recently lost his job and he was angry about it. In Pittsburgh, friends of the shooter said he was upset about recently getting fired. Other perpetrators of mass shootings in the past few months were also recently unemployed and frustrated about their situations.

Whether there is a pattern in these shootings or not, we will be seeing a larger number of funeral cars in areas where they take place. If there are not any for the shooter, there will be some for the ones that the shooter kills.