As the rate of obesity and weight-related deaths increases in the United States, so does the need for larger caskets.
Stan Guilkey, owner of Guilkey Funeral Home, said he has seen the demand for larger caskets grow in the past five years. Guilkey’s is the smallest funeral home in Anderson, and Guilkey recently decided to invest in a titan body lift to help handle larger deceased people.
In the beginning of the year, Guilkey had several instances in which he needed an easier way to transfer bodies from the preparation table to the casket.
“Earlier this year, we had a person over 300 pounds, and we had four men lifting the person,” Guilkey said.
He said he had to borrow a titan body lift from other funeral homes in the area.
“It’s gotten to the point where I said, ‘We need one of those,’” Guilkey said.
Guilkey estimated about 5 percent of his calls are for larger caskets. Batesville Casket Company also saw the demand for larger caskets and, in response, it created a line of plus-sized and oversized caskets (from 26 inches to more than 30 inches wide) called Dimensions. The Dimensions line has more than 30 caskets people can choose from, most with the same features a traditional-sized casket (23 inches to 24 inches wide) would offer.
“From a sales standpoint, the sales of our oversize caskets still represent less than 10 percent of our overall sales, but it is growing each year,” Joe Weigel, director of communications at Batesville, wrote in an e-mail. “I can tell you that sales of our oversize caskets experienced a double-digit increase from 2005 to 2006.”
Guilkey remembered a couple of instances in which he had to find oversized caskets before 2000, but he saw a definitive increase in need after that point.
Rob Loose, owner of Robert Loose Funeral Home and Crematory, said he also has seen an increase in need for larger caskets.
Loose said the problem with larger caskets comes when they are too big for the vault.
“What we have found is that the biggest concern with bigger-size caskets would be that they don’t fit in a normal vault,” he said.
If someone wanted to be part of a family plot, sometimes the older graveyards have trouble accommodating bigger vaults, Loose said.
“Graves are set a certain size, and once you go over those boundaries, that becomes a problem,” he said.
Almost all the companies around carry caskets that are wider on the inside, but still small enough externally to fit in a normal vault.
The problem does not only apply to wider people. Taller people also face the need for a customized casket.
“We very seldom get the request for longer caskets; it’s always wider caskets,” Weigel said.
Sometimes, a family prefers a smaller casket instead of the traditional size, Loose said.
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