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US company builds seven-foot wide coffin
Wed May 11, 6:30 PM ET
LYNN, United States (AFP) - At seven feet wide, it's certainly the biggest coffin the Goliath Casket Company had ever built.
And since Goliath is the oldest oversized coffin company in the United States, it's probably the widest casket made since the days when lumber companies were asked to knock together a big pine box.
The seven-foot (2.1 meter) casket was built for a 900-pound (64 stone) man who died in Alaska.
Most people who weigh that much can squeeze into Goliath's 52-inch coffin, which is about as big as a double bed.
But this man's legs would not close.
"It's really quite sad," said Goliath's owner, Keith Davis. "The body's been frozen and from what we can gather it's taken a while for them to get (the funeral) arranged."
The expansion of American waistlines has forced US companies to make a number of adjustments.
Airlines have increased their passenger weight estimates. Clothing stores are offering larger sizes. Furniture manufacturers are making wider chairs.
But nowhere are the consequences of the obesity epidemic more painfully obvious than in a converted hog barn on a country road in rural Indiana.
Davis' father founded the company 20 years ago because he wanted to offer the families of the obese a more dignified coffin than the slipshod special orders he saw being made by the casket company he worked for.
He altered the coffin's design so it would not look like a train car and reinforced its structure so it would not bend or buckle under the extra weight.
He built lids that could be propped open for full or half viewings and had foam inserts that made them easier to close. And he expanded the width from the standard 24 inches.
"Thirty-three inches were our biggest back in '90. We thought that was pretty big," Davis said.
"Then we started getting calls for bigger and bigger caskets so I went up to 48 inches. Now I'm making them 52 inches."
Sales at Goliath have also been growing by about 20 percent a year and the four-person company can barely keep up.
Goliath sold 600 caskets last year, which Davis said is just a fraction of the market. He estimates there are 200 to 300 oversized caskets sold every day in the US.
"Fifteen years ago it was two or three per day," he said.
Traditional casket manufacturers entered the oversized market about five years ago but most can not make them wider than 33 inches. Aside from the technical problems of adjusting production lines and shipping crates, there is not much profit in supersized caskets. And many severely obese Americans are poor.
That's where companies like Goliath step in. Davis keeps costs down by running the business out of his home and making seven standard sizes ranging from 29 to 52 inches wide.
He can get the smaller caskets delivered within 24 to 48 hours by driving them to a Delta Air Lines cargo facility a few hours away. Anything over 36 inches has to be delivered in his big blue van. He's put about 150,000 miles on it in the past four years.
Goliath's caskets retail for about 2,000 to 4,000 dollars (1,552 to 3,103 euros), slightly more than the average coffin, and are available in a range of colors.
Special orders -- like the seven foot coffin that's going to be shipped on a barge to Alaska -- can take more time, and cost more money.
The families of the obese are used to waiting for special arrangements, Davis said. The trick is to make sure there are not any surprises, which is why Davis spends hours on the phone with funeral directors to help with plans.
The list of things that can go wrong is endless.
One woman ended up face down in her casket after the body lift broke. Another funeral home could not get the casket through the door. Then there was the casket that creaked and buckled during the service as it teetered on a small stand.
And there was the casket that did not close which ended up on the evening news. That family called Goliath in tears.
Solutions often are not pretty. Some families are forced to buy two gravesites. Others have to use pickup trucks to transport a coffin to the cemetery. One service was held in a garage.
Davis enjoys the challenge. He also talks about the obese with a great deal of compassion, though he often has to stop himself from walking up to people in restaurants and telling them to put away their second helpings.
"There's no reason for anyone in this country not to have a good diet. There's no reason to go out and eat a whole bag of ding dongs," he said. "If everyone went on a diet I could find something else to do."
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