There’s a small but growing number of funeral shoppers who are becoming increasingly determined to find funeral directors who will assist them, or partner with them, in arranging a funeral. Some simply want to roll their sleeves up and do their bit for the person who’s died; others want to keep the costs down.
It’s good to know that they don’t have too far to look. Funeral directors are pretty good at accommodating a DIY element — at the cost of some angst. DIY-ers cost hours of free advice and may be unreliable about getting to the crem on time. Funeral directors aren’t control freaks for fun.
Until now, it has been very hard for DIY-ers to find anyone who’ll rent them a self-drive hearse. It’s easy to see the enormous emotional satisfaction to be gained from driving the person who’s died on their last journey on Earth. It’s just as easy to see that there could be insuperable insurance difficulties in the way of this.
No carriage master that we know of has ever leased cars + drivers direct to bereaved people, let alone a self-drive hearse. While understandable, it’s also a pity. We know that a lot of funeral shoppers like to order and pay for their coffin direct from the maker. They’d probably like to source other goods and services, too. But funeral directors feel they must protect their commercial viability by being one-stop shops for everything, so they strongly encourage manufacturers and suppliers to deal with the trade only.
There’s plenty of good news for funeral shoppers who want to buy their own coffin. The shelves are now healthily stocked.
And now there’s good news for those who’d like to order a self-drive hearse. James Hardcastle at The Carriage Master can supply handsome hearses and limousines nationwide direct to bereaved people, with drivers or without.
They give you a little tutorial before you get behind the wheel, of course.
We can see a lot of forward-looking funeral directors offering their clients this option.
Find The Carriage Master here.
excellent stuff
andrew
how wonderful.
It will be interesting to see how they develop
Brilliant. But I too would certainly loan my hearse to a family wanting to do their own thing. For a modest fee of course. In order to break the status-quo we must offer different elements wherever possible. Why shouldn’t ‘consumers’ be able to hire a hearse or buy a coffin? This is 2013, the internet makes many things possible.
[…] with his self-drive hearse, a venture to which the teeming team here at the GFG-Batesvile Shard has given its unanimous and enthusiastic backing. No one ever went wrong, we like to say (over and over, the record shows), who sought to find ways […]