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Truck Tombstone Reaches Final Parking Place

January 8, 2009

Since 1994, an 11-foot-long, 1,800-pound tombstone carved to resemble a logging truck has been an attraction at the Salisbury Monument Co. in Salisbury, Maryland. “We were on a buying trip in Elberton, Georgia,” recalled Wanda Disharoon, “on a back road in a little town named Dewey Rose. And there in front of a house was a John Deere tractor, a full-size jukebox, and the log truck. All carved as headstones.”

(Wanda noted, “Almost everyone around Elberton has something to do with granite.”)

Wanda and her husband bought the truck and brought it back to Salisbury, figuring that one of the many truckers that drove past their business would eventually buy it. “It was a big, big draw,” Wanda said. “We would have truckers pull these big rigs over and put their kids on the stone and take pictures of them.”

It took a lot longer than they had expected, but the truck was purchased late last year and now marks a grave of Dana Wheatley of Wheatley Trucking in nearby Sharptown. The tombstone is wide enough to span five graves, and so “His daughter came and bought it for the whole family,” Wanda said.

(A transportation-themed Mid-Atlantic cemetery tour should also include the Mercedes Benz Grave in New Jersey.)

The departure of the truck isn’t the end of attractive headstones in Salisbury. Wanda said that a black, 2,600-pound “full-sized Harley-Davidson” was “being made and on its way” to serve as a new photo prop for the company. Until someone dies and puts it to use, too.

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