GRAND FORKS — With everyday life more expensive than it was only a few years ago, some people are finding those increased costs are impacting more than their grocery and fuel prices.
Local funeral homes and memorial businesses are reporting increased costs for their services, mostly because of increased costs from vendors, due to tariffs and inflation.
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Shawn Nygaard, owner of Amundson Funeral and Cremation Service in Grand Forks, said the largest jump in cost he's seen has been related to merchandise selected by families, including caskets, vaults, urns and personalized memorabilia.
"I guess that could be associated with the tariffs that typically we do not see," he said.
The funeral home orders caskets from vendors in South Dakota and Indiana. Nygaard said following the COVID-19 pandemic, fuel surcharges on deliveries started to increase. The funeral home absorbed the extra costs at first thinking they would be temporary, but by the following year, the vendors added the increases to the cost of the caskets themselves.
The increases on caskets have been on average around $200-$250 or more, according to Nygaard. Prices for caskets found for one vendor company, Titan Ca...