Why Are Caskets So Expensive?

The rising price of caskets has outpaced even the rising rate of inflation -- but why? Learn what industry experts think in this episode of BrainStuff, based on this article: https://people.howstuffworks.com/culture-traditions/funerals/caskets-so-expensive-news.htm

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff, a production of I Heart Radio,
Hey brain Stuff Lauren Vogelbaum. Here in the United States,
the cost of a traditional funeral is between eight thousand
and ten thousand dollars on average, and that doesn't include
the price of the burial plot and other cemetery fees.
A casket alone runs two thousand, five hundred dollars on average,

(00:24):
making it the biggest single expense of saying goodbye to
a loved one. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
the price of caskets has skyrocketed two over the past
thirty years, outpacing the inflation rate for other consumer products
by more than double So why exactly do caskets cost

(00:44):
so much? Is it simply the cost of materials or
our funeral homes taking advantage of grieving customers who aren't
emotionally prepared to shop around. What many people don't know
is that they don't have to buy a casket from
their funeral home. It's a federal law that funeral homes
must accept all outside caskets, including ones they are bought

(01:05):
online or from Costco for example. Before the article. This
episode is based on how Stuff Works. Spoke with both
a second generation funeral home director and the co founders
of an online casket company aiming to disrupt the funeral industry.
Douglas Dutch Knee is the CEO and funeral director at
Knee Family Funeral Home and Cremation Services in ann Arbor, Michigan.

(01:29):
Knee and his six sisters grew up in a home
above the family business, and he and his wife purchased
the funeral home from N's parents in the year two
thousand and These own kids work there now too. When
it comes to the price of a casket, Nie says
that there are a lot of variables, which is why
he says he can offer families a no frills casket
for as low as nine hundred dollars to a high

(01:51):
end casket that runs six thousand or more. The biggest
differentiator is the material with which the casket is built.
There are two main types of casket material, wood and metal.
Nie explained, with a wood casket, you can equate it
to furniture. A ma hagany, hickory, or walnut casket is
going to cost far more than pine or oak. For

(02:12):
metal caskets, the US expensive models are made of twin
e gauge steel, while the pricest are constructed from semi
precious metals like copper or bronze. For both wood and
metal caskets, the quality and details of the craftsmanship rounded
corners instead of welded, for example, will also determine the price.
And then there are other considerations like the material inside

(02:35):
the casket. A crape interior is going to be less
expensive than velvet. For military burial, the family might want
to customize the interior with an army or Navy seal.
All of this upgrades and details can add up. Knee
insists that despite the high average cost of a casket,
most funeral homes carry a range of caskets to meet

(02:56):
the budget of everyone in their community to make sure
that they have something for everyone. But there could be
other reasons why caskets have gotten so expensive. Josh Siegel
and Scott Ginsburg are co founders of Titan Casket, an
online casket retailer, and they argue that an outdated business
model they call it big Casket, is to blame for

(03:17):
the high price of most funeral home casket. It turns
out the two large manufacturers, Batesville and Matthews, control of
the casket distribution in the US, as Siegel said, they
exclusively selled the funeral homes. Because of that structure, they
mark up their caskets three and that casket monopoly is

(03:40):
only one part of the problem, the Titan guys argue.
The other part is opportunistic markup. Ginsburg said, for the
most part, consumers in these situations don't shop. They go
to the same funeral home they've always gone to. It's
not right or wrong, it's just what people do. And
funeral directors understand people don't shop, which is why they
and charged twice as much for the same casket. And

(04:03):
many Americans don't know that you have the right to
supply your own casket for a loved one's funeral. The
Federal Trade Commission enacted the Funeral Rule, which aimed to
bring greater transparency to funeral pricing. The rule also made
it illegal for a funeral home to refuse to handle
a casket the client purchased from a third party retailer,
which now includes online sales. A lot of grieving families

(04:27):
simply aren't interested in shopping around for a better deal
on a casket, and that's understandable. That's one of the
reasons why that of caskets were still purchased through funeral
homes as of twenty nineteen, but companies like Titan think
that if consumers knew how easy it was to buy
a casket online and potentially a lot less expensive, then
people would buy more caskets outside of the funeral home.

(04:51):
Ni who is a past president of the Michigan Funeral
Directors Association and is currently an at large board member
of the National Funeral Directors Association, and says that funeral
homes are happy to comply with the FTC's funeral rule
a quote, families can choose to purchase something online and
there's not an issue at all. Our business model is
to provide services to families, and the casket is just

(05:14):
one of the items that can be chosen to ensure
that the services conducted the way a family wants. Besides,
n points out fewer people are choosing a traditional burial anymore.
According to report, the cremation rate of Americans was around
fifty that year, and by traditional burial is expected to
drop to just of all funerals. With cremation, the body

(05:38):
is placed in an inexpensive plywood or cardboard container that
is also consumed in the fire. By the way, have
you ever wondered why undertakers are called undertakers? Back in
the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the first undertakers were furniture
makers who started building caskets as a sideline. They got
their name by being the people undertaking the burial. Today's

(06:07):
episode is based on the article Grave Matters Why are
Caskets so Expensive? On housetof works dot com, written by
Dave Rubs. The brain Stuff is production of I Heart
Radio in partnership with how stuff works dot com, and
it's produced by Tyler Clang. Four more podcasts to my
heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.