Indiana:
Increasing obesity in the US is causing a boom in business for oversized casket makers.
Indiana casket maker Keith Davis, Owner of Goliath Casket says, as Americans get fatter he's trying to accommodate their girth -- in death. At 4 feet 4 inches wide...the caskets are the size of a compact car and his business is booming courtesy the growing obesity epidemic.
Davis' company, Goliath Casket is the only manufacturer in the country that builds 52-inch caskets, the largest size available. Five people weld metal and sew fabric to produce about 16 caskets a month. The largest one can hold more than a thousand pounds. Davis says that the overall need for bigger caskets goes up every year, probably a good 10 to 20 percent.
Twenty years ago, no one was making oversized caskets. Now, all of the major manufacturers in the U.S. make a line of such caskets. Davis started the business about 25 years ago after learning that obese people didn't have many burial options.
Probably one of the biggest casket he made was in 2005 a seven-foot by seven-foot coffin for a man who had passed away in Alaska.