The patent-pending LoadAlone is a multi-position winch pulling system used to load human remains into vehicles for removals and for transportation to funeral homes, airports and crematories. Many funeral directors suffer from back, knee and shoulder injuries from a career of lifting. LoadAlone inventor and NFDA member David Murphy himself has trouble standing but commonly loads and unloads cots, cases and caskets with only the help of this loading device.

Murphy is a licensed funeral director and partner at his family firm, Paul L. Murphy and Sons, in Newark, New York. A 2013 auto accident left him with spinal cord injuries. He taught himself to walk again and fought to regain his position in the family business, but he needed to be able to perform all the duties he had before the injury (he’d been hiring friends to help him load at hospitals and at the funeral home for transports to the airport and crematory). Inspired by winches used to pull fishing nets at fisheries in Alaska, Murphy saw the answer to his loading problem and invented the remote-control, multi-position winch system and subsequently added the tipping feature to help with unloading. loadalone.com