Fort
Wayne funeral director sends people to the afterlife for a fraction of the price
By Ryan Polk, THG Features
Cooper’s hearse
Welmont Cooper understands
the pain and suffering it causes people who have lost a member of the family to
crack open their checkbooks and fork out five to seven thousand dollars for the
average funeral. Six years ago his uncle died a pauper, and he was the only
surviving relative. Having just lost his job as a welder, he was short on cash
to help cover the funeral expenses.
Cooper, 44, was forced to
max out his credit card to give his uncle a proper burial. “I didn’t even like
the guy; he was an old drunk and meaner than a rattlesnake, so I was pretty
pissed about the whole thing. After thinking about it, I realized there are
probably other people just like me who want to bury the deceased at a
bargain-basement price. That is when I decided to start Cooper’s Budget Funeral
Service,” said Cooper
The Crematorium
Business was slow at first,
but once word got around that Cooper could provide a funeral service for under a
thousand dollars, business began to take off. He says he does at least 40
funerals and/or cremations a week, with many of the deceased coming from as far
away as Indianapolis and Detroit. “I can pick up a body three hours away and
cremate it for thousands less than you would pay at your funeral home right down
the street,” says Cooper. “The key is keeping overhead to a minimum.”
Cooper keeps his overhead
low by running the business out of his home and using older model vehicles, so
he keeps his monthly payments as low as possible. He also has not paid for any
advertising since his first six months in business, when he had a small
classified in a local newspaper. He is also his company’s only employee. “This
keeps prices as low as possible for my customers.”
The
low end of Cooper’s casket selection
These simple economic
principles have helped Cooper take over a large share of the Northeast Indiana
funeral market, forcing some competitors to close their doors. Even so, he has
no plans of expanding the business, stating “I am making more money than I ever
dreamed about. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. At the rate I am going, I can
retire in 10 years.”
