Heritage Coach Dealer Blog USA

Earlier this month, the annual Frozen Dead Guy Days celebration took place in Colorado. The event is one that brings hearses, caskets and cold temperatures all to the same place for a fun and festive three-day celebration in honor of “Grandpa” Bredo Morstoel, a man who died in Norway about 20 years ago and was transported to Colorado after being cryogenically frozen. His grandson and the wife of Bredo kept the body behind their house in a shed. The grandson was eventually deported and his mother was evicted. However, the frozen guy stayed in the shed.

Coloradoans began holding the macabre festival in 2002 which is like a cross between Oktoberfest and Halloween, according to one student at the University of Colorado. People dress up as morticians and some paint their faces to represent death-like masks and more. There is a Parade of Hearses, coffin races, a Polar Plunge and more festivities to make the three-day event fun and exciting and a popular draw for people from all over the area. According to Nederland police Sgt. Jake Adler, the attendance at this year’s event was higher than previous years because the weather was warmer than usual.

The crowd was so large, in fact, the Brain Freeze booze tent had to expand its drinking area beyond the temporary pedestrian mall. One of the more popular drinks of the weekend was “Grandpa’s Spirit,” a vodka-based drink that had everybody feeling good.

Frozen Dead Guy Days is a fun event that happens every year. As it becomes more and more popular, there are sure to be larger crowds and more festivities to entertain the people who show up for this fun yet macabre event.

The funeral industry has been struggling for some time now. There are a number of different reasons for this. One of the main reasons is the increase in cremations. Whatever the reason, many funeral directors are left wondering how they can drive new sales for their funeral homes. The answer might be found in using new technologies.

The advancement of the Internet has led to the creation of thousands of new tools that small businesses can leverage. The best part for funeral directors is that along with the increase in new tools, costs for using those tools have been decreasing at a similar rate. By leveraging certain technologies and getting creative, funeral directors can find ways to drive new revenue streams for their funeral homes, while their competitors are left trying to do the same old thing.

Video Services could be a huge growth opportunity for funeral directors. Funeral directors can create a new service whereby families pay to have live video feeds coming from their viewing. This allows friends and family who live out of town to participate in the funeral. Webcams can be setup throughout the funeral home, along with computer monitors. This will allows friends and family to log on from the comfort of their own homes, watch the viewing, and even video chat with other friends and family who are attending the viewing. Technologies like Oovoo and Skype can be leveraged for this new video service. Guess what? Both of these video chat software tools are absolutely free.

There are even new Startups being born around video services for funeral homes. Online-Funeral is one of those Startups. For a service fee, you can outsource this new service to Online-Funerals and they will take care of everything for you. With that said, it may be that many funeral directors will want to set this up themselves as it’s really not too complicated. If anything, you can bring in a technology/video expert to help install your webcams and computer monitors with either Skype or Oovoo. Either way, by leveraging technology and thinking creatively about your funeral home business, funeral directors can create new revenue streams. For those funeral directors who maintain the status quo, the numbers do not look to be in your favor. Take advantage of the tools that are out there and you’ll be very happy with the results.

Heritage Coach Insider Program

For those of you who would like to receive special saving opportunities on new and used limousine and hearses, as well as, service coupons, please consider signing up for our free Heritage Coach Insider Program. Each month we will send you 1-2 emails. We 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. We hope you considering signing up to be Heritage Coach Insider today.

Are you looking to invest in a new hearse for your funeral home? If so, there are some really great Cadillac models coming to market in the near future. We are waiting on shipments of the following Cadillac Hearses:

• 2010 Cadillac S&S Imperial
• 2010 Cadillac S&S Medalist Hearse
• 2010 Cadillac Superior Statesman Hearse

Each of the 3 new Cadillac hearse models offer both, funeral home owners and funeral home directors, great features. We are expected to receive a new shipment of each of these three models very soon. If you’d like to find out more information on any of the 3 new Cadillac hearses OR would like to pre-order your new 2010 Cadillac hearse, we can help you with that.

Be one of the first to get email notification when the vehicle you are looking for is added to our inventory. Signing up for the Auto Locator Service gives you the inside track to our most up to date inventory and helps you find the vehicle you are looking for. For more information on a particular Cadillac hearse or to pre-order your new Cadillac hearse today, call our Internet Manager at 610-862-0560 and tell him you found his information on the Heritage Coach Dealer Blog.

Heritage Coach Insider Program

Last month we rolled out a brand new program, the Heritage Coach Insider Program, where you’ll receive deals on our hearse and limo sales. If you sign up to be Heritage Coach Insider, each month we will send you 1-2 emails. 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. We hope you considering signing up to be Heritage Coach Insider today.

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.