If you find yourself close to Lebanon, Missouri on July 22 and love professional cars, as I do, make sure you stop by the Grand Concours d'Elegance at the National and Premiere Professional Vehicle Show.
This car show is based around the annual meeting of the Professional Car Society (PCS), July 19-22.
Every year the PCS International Meet assembles their members together for several days of car fun and a little business too. Tours, lunches, dinners, parking lot chat, and the grand Concours d'Elegance Show always make for a great time!
The most exciting part of the meeting, for me, is the Concours d'Elegance Show. The show will include some of the finest examples of vintage and classic professional vehicles. It is being held on Saturday, July 22 from 10:00 A.M. - 3:00 P.M. and will be in the climate-controlled exhibition hall of the Kenneth E. Cowan Civic Center. The public is welcome and there is no charge to attend.
I plan to be there, and many of my upcoming articles will feature some of what I see and learn at the show. Even if you can't attend you'll be able to experience many of the fascinating vehicles featured at the show.
If you would like additional information about the Professional Car Society, check out their website at www.theprofessionalcarsociety.org.
In this article, we begin our special series on the many dealers that make up HearseHub. We start with Mullen Coach, not because he is our biggest dealer, but because without Mullen Coach there would be no HearseHub, but more on that later.
Mullen History
Mullen Coach started in 1956 when Ralph E. Mullen (John's dad) entered the funeral coach industry after six years as Sales Manager of a Dodge-Plymouth dealership in Mission, Kansas, a suburb of Kansas City. He started with The Hess & Eisenhardt Company, covering a territory of Kansas, Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma and Colorado.
Ralph took on the Superior Coach franchise in 1957, and in 1974 he became a dealer for Armbruster/Stageway Limousines, Ft. Smith, Arkansas.
In 1962, he was joined by Raymond E. Rawie, and in 1981 by Clint Cole. His son John also joined the firm in the 1980s and is sole owner of the operation today. Ralph may be gone, but is certainly not forgotten by the many of you who purchased vehicles from him and later from his son. Today Mullen Coach is still located in Kansas City and doing very well.
Mullen Coach - HearseHub Connection
Mullen Coach is located in Kansas City, as am I. In 2006 my company was in the business of providing inventory systems to used car dealers for showcasing their vehicles on their website. On a whim, I made a call on John Mullen, the owner of Mullen Coach. I most likely stopped by his establishment because I have a strange attraction to hearses, and simply went in to view them up close. John had a website, but it did not include an inventory system, so his website visitors were unable to see his vehicles online. John immediately saw the value in what we had to offer. With some modifications to our system, we launched his website inventory system.
As I mentioned, were it not for Mullen Coach, HearseHub wouldn't exist. Working with John on his inventory, I learned about the funeral vehicle industry, not even aware there was such a thing. One day during a meeting with John I noticed the Funeral Home and Cemetery News on his desk, which I didn't know existed either. He told me about the publication and gave it to me, so I could look through it.
To make a long story short, so it fits in the article space, I approached the editor, Peggy Rouzzo, with the outlandish idea of creating a national advertising website for funeral vehicles. She was thrilled with the idea and we were off to the races. HearseHub is celebrating its fifth year in business and shows an average of over 450 funeral vehicles.