Can you own a hearse

The classification of what a commercial vehicle is depends on who you are talking to. Insurance companies and the DMV may differ on what they deem to be commercial use. Insurance companies normally classify vehicles as commercial when they are used for business purposes. If the vehicle is classified as commercial, it may be required to carry additional coverage and will have higher premiums than a personal use car. A hearse may be classified as commercial by an insurance company even when the DMV says it is being used for personal use, so you need to talk to the right person to avoid higher insurance rates.

In fact, many manufacturers offer their own version of a hearse. These include Mercedes-Benz, Plymouth, and Chevy to name just a few. Each manufacturer offers its own specification of a hearse. This being said, most families expect a certain vehicle to pull up outside a cemetery. Fuel Consumption overall will depend on the type of journeys made and the weight of the vehicle being driven. Overall, a hearse is going to fall into the average Miles Per Gallon range for most privately owned vehicles.

Deciding to make State funerals are extremely rare across the globe, but when they do happen they are great ceremonial occasions and normally cost the taxpayer an arm and a leg. Funeral hearses are usually equipped with petrol or diesel engines with a power of between hp and hp in petrol models and between hp and hp in diesel models. Plug-in hybrid models with hp are also available, although if you are considering this option, you should consider what type of funeral home services you usually offer.

When it comes to intra-city transfers, plug-in hybrids are economical, environmentally friendly and quiet — perfect for driving around a cemetery. In fact, the Ford Mondeo Hybrid is one of the most popular models among funeral homes. Economic uncertainty and the constant changes in environmental legislation, especially with regard to traffic restrictions within cities, mean that many companies are considering alternative formulas to the purchase of their fleet of funeral hearses.

Renting, or long-term hire of the funeral hearse, is an interesting option for those who do not want to make a large initial investment and, in exchange for a fixed fee, forget about the costs of maintenance and servicing of the vehicle, which are borne by the lessor. In the case of leasing, funeral homes pay to rent the funeral hearse with the option to purchase it, usually within two years. In this case, the funeral homes pay the maintenance costs of the vehicle and can decide whether they wish to return it and exchange it for a new vehicle or purchase it for a residual price of the initial cost.

If you opt for a second-hand funeral hearse, remember that these vehicles usually have a useful life of 10 years due to the high mileage they support. The purchase continues to be the favourite option for most funeral homes due to the attractive offers and payment facilities offered by the concessionaires and also due to the state aid and subsidies for the renewal of the vehicle fleet offered by some countries.

The usual option is for funeral homes to purchase brand new vehicles, but there is also a second-hand market. If you are going to resort to this type of purchase, remember that a funeral hearse has a high mileage because it is constantly on the move to provide services that include long-distance transfers and, therefore, it usually has a useful life of approximately 10 years.

You must be logged in to post a comment. Sell your car. Dead serious — Five reasons you should buy a hearse April 20, by Antony Ingram.

Now well admit, a hearse may not be the first vehicle that comes to mind when youre hunting for a new car, but bear with us on this. For those not put off by the morbidity of driving around in something thats carried hundreds of people to their final resting places, there is plenty to recommend a hearse as transport for the open-minded. Youll not have failed to notice that funeral processions arent normally held at breakneck speed. As such, you can expect an ex-hearse to have led a fairly easy life.

Itll always have been driven with the utmost care, out of respect to its late passengers and their grieving families. Even when not on duty, as it were, the vehicles used arent really suited to being driven quickly, so this is one used vehicle that wont have a dodgy history.

You could argue that comfort doesnt matter too much for the hearses typical passenger, but to ensure smooth and dignified travel, the coachbuilder will usually choose a large, comfortable saloon car as the basis for the vehicle. That means itll waft over the worst of bumps, but it also means the seats up front should be comfortable enough too. Reanimated corpses hiding under passenger side seat: Be sure to lift all the seat cushions and check for the undead.

A zombie is generally a bad thing to have in your car, and are near impossible to get rid of once you have them. Also because they are dead, they smell awful, worse than hippies.

If upon receiving your car you find it has a drooling unholy creature from hell in it, check with your local parts store for Zombie spray. Also, some insurance plans cover damage caused by drooling unholy creatures from hell, check on your insurance cards for the abbreviation D. A car under the control of zombies is an extra investment because you are going to have to shoot them in the head to put them down for good, and if you don't own a gun you are already putting in more money to get one.

Incidentally, if you car was owned by hippies, you'll know. Yuk, yuk, yuk. Damn, I hate hippies. Now then, being that there are many different types of hearses, this section is designed to help you identify some of the trademark features and traits that will let you know who made the hearse you are looking at.

In nearly all cases, looking at the design of the back end will tell you who made it if you can identify the the details, for that reason, many of the following pictures are close ups of these very features. These are the main styles of hearses:. Landau This refers to the chrome bar on the side of the casket compartment.

This is the most distinctive trademark of hearses to date. This stlye of hearse lacked the landau bar, and instead favored a full window design all the way around the car instead. A combo of hearse AND ambulance! A hearse that was equipped with both funeral and ambulance equipment.

In the old days, funeral homes ran ambulance services as well as funeral services. This called for some cars to double as both funeral cars and ambulances, featuring casket rollers, AND lights, sirens, gurneys, and oxygen equipment.

Some even had removable landau panels, as illustrated by this car. Look closely and you can see the seams where the landau bar panels detach from the body on some combos. Considered by many to be the best style available, 3-way hearses featured no center divider the thin wall with the glass window, much like a limousine between the front and back interior, but instead had suicide doors, and a casket table that would extend out the back doors as well as the side of the car as well, so as to allow a funeral to be loaded from the curbside.

Notice the suicide doors, which are necessary to unload the casket from the side. Important note, just because a hearse has suicide doors does not necessarily mean it is a 3 way, if there is a center partition it is an endloader.

The most common type of hearse available, the endloader featured a center divider, and no casket table at all. Instead, the floor was outfitted only with casket rollers to ease the coffin into place.

In some cases endloaders have suicide doors, but more often than not, the sport regular doors. Also common on and endloader is a center partition, a wall just behind the drivers compartment that seperates the front and rear. While some endloaders, like Oldsmobile and Pontiac, may or may not sport a center partition, you will NEVER see a 3-way hearse with a center partition. Some hearses that are endloaders will sometimes have a casket table that extends only out the rear door and not the side doors.

Who makes hearses? Most of the time, as a new hearse owner, you are jumping into this thing cold, with no idea what makes one different from the other, that is the way I started out, this part gives you a loose idea of coach builers:.

Hearses are made from Cadillac, Buick, Olds, etc but they are not made by these companies. What happens is this: The car company ie: Cadillac, Oldsmobile makes the frame, called a commercial chassis, a slightly longer frame than a normal car.

This commercial chassis includes the engine, the front fenders, hood, grill, bumper, and a few other parts like tail lights, dashboard, seat, and steering wheel. This frame is then shipped to a company that does nothing but make hearses. They fabricate the doors, roof, interior, even most of the glass, on a purely custom basis. This make finding parts a bonifide pain in the ass. Anyway, there are several large hearse makers out there, and this is a quick guide on how to distinguish the large ones:.

One of the most common hearses in production, Superior was responsible for mass production numbers of funeral vehicles and ambulances. Superior built on Cadillac chassis with a wide variety of styling.

The most common way of telling one of these hearses is the chrome above the rear quarter panel. Another striking style present in Superior was the 'C-pillar' of the rear casket door.

This last pillar in the door slanted dramatically forward, giving the car a sleek and dynamitc 'In motion' look, though mid's, the slanted doors all but disappeared from Superior styling. Superior was the parent company of Consort. This offshoot of Superior was responsible for making Pontiac Bonneville based pro-cars.

Sharing the same style as larger Superior hearses and ambulances, Consorts also usually had more head room than Cotner Bevington, their main competetor in the economy pro-car industry. Sayers and Scovill. This company, known formally as Sayers and Scovill, was purchased by Hess and Eisenhart in , was responsible for a slightly more ritzy funeral car. Their ads were geared towards funeral directors who were attracted to the idea of a costly, yet elegant funeral car.

The raised chrome piece is also present to a lesser extent as seen here Note that it is similar to the chrome piece pictured for Superior, but that it is smaller and more subdued. Miller Meteor as well as Eureka also had this feature. Miller Meteor. A large player in the field, Miller Meteors are easily distinguished by a straight chrome piece above the rear quarter panel and below the landau bar. This chrome is a straight piece all the way across the back door.

Another indicator is the metal plate behind the casket compartment doors. Another way to tell? Cotner Bevington. These hearses were made by an offshoot of Miller Meteor. Of course these cars were also favored as ambulances due to their smaller size and greater speed.

The way to identify a CB is to look at it and see if it is an Oldsmobile 98, as this was the ONLY car this company made professional vehicles out of. A common practice in ambulance services was to have a few Cadillacs which were far more costly than CB's and perhaps a Cotner Bevington ambulance as a secondary rescue vehicle.

In ambulance form, these little cars, along with Pontiac Consorts, were considered to be the fastest cars to use as rescue vehicles. Where to start?