Low-Cost Wooden Caskets

Low-Cost Wooden Caskets FARM HOME Miscellaneous 28-1-44 Zane Dittmann, Bonners Ferry, Idaho, recently called FARM SHOW to tell us about a new business he started. He builds and sells "inexpensive caskets that people can afford." Dittman is a journeyman carpenter who builds his caskets from pine, fir, larch, or cedar. They sell for $295 plus S&H. "I make very basic caskets and cut out the middleman, which is why I can keep the price so low. I don't sell to funeral homes or dealers," says Dittman. "The savings can be big. For example, if you buy a wooden casket at a funeral home you'll pay about $1,800 and the lowest price you can expect to pay for a cardboard casket is about $500. Of course, metal caskets are the most expensive. I'd say $3,800 is a mid range price for a metal casket sold by a funeral home. If you wait until the need is there, funeral homes will nail you because 90 percent of their business comes from someone in grief who walks through the door and doesn't know there are alternatives." Dittman will arrange shipping anywhere in the U.S., using common carriers to find the lowest shipping cost. "Even with shipping charges added, my coffins are still economical. For example, the shipping charge to Denver is about $105. So if you add $105 to $295, your final price is still under the cheapest cardboard box you can buy at a funeral home," he says. According to Dittman, funeral homes used to have a monopoly on caskets and didn't allow you to buy anything but their own. That monopoly has been broken, he says. "Funeral homes are now required to take you if you provide your own casket." He says a few other businesses have started building and selling caskets direct to consumers. "However, most of them still cater to folks with more money, so they make the caskets nicer and charge higher prices. The cheapest price I've seen for a casket on the internet was between $600 and 700 plus S&H. I'm doing the Henry Ford thing; that is, here's the basic model, it's not fancy but it's inexpensive, and if you want to get fancy I can do that too. Custom-sized or designed caskets can be ordered. It will just cost you more." Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Zane A. Dittmann, The Coffin Shop, Box 880, Bonners Ferry, Idaho 83805 ph 208 267-6222.

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