I was just trying to wrap my head around how a cremation and small family service could cost 10K.
Funeral homes are required to have (and adhere to) a General Price List, which must be available to the public. A few funeral homes put theirs on their website, but most don't. However, since this funeral home is local, you can just drop in and ask for their General Price List and be on your merry way. It's likely prices have gone up since the funeral your friend bought, but it can give you a ballpark.
The General Price List has a standard format, which lists all the services a funeral home offers, along with the price for each service. Chief among them is "services of funeral director and staff," which you will be charged no matter what. Depending on the funeral home, the charge for services of funeral director and staff can be fairly substantial. Then you pick and choose among all the other services and products (although funeral homes can have policies that require embalming or refrigeration in certain situations, and if you're one of those situations, you have to pay for it even though
you wouldn't have chosen it).
They can (but don't have to) offer "packages" like direct cremation or cremation with a service. The General Price List will show it, along with what is included in the package.
It's conceivable that your friend went to a funeral home that doesn't offer packages, and was paying for various line items like services of funeral director and staff, embalming, use of the funeral home for the service, etc. It would still be hard to get up to $10,000 for the type of funeral you said she had.
Now I'm guessing that the cost of the entire thing was around 10K but I'm thinking that the local place is padding everything else to makeup for the fact they didn't sell a big fancy casket.
No, the prices are what they are whether you buy a casket or not. Which makes me wonder--are you sure your friend didn't buy a casket?
This funeral home has its General Price List on its website. Obviously prices vary among funeral homes, but it can illuminate how funerals are priced. And you'll note that this funeral home offers "cremation caskets" in addition to regular caskets, so cremating with a casket is apparently a thing. Perhaps if people have services with the body present, or even open casket services.
https://callawayjones.com/price-list
Do you think a town of 20K would have a facility to cremate bodies or do some larger funeral homes contain crematoriums....in my friends case (the 10K bill) there might have been a body transport fee to the site...which probably is 50 to 100 miles one way.
If there is, it would have to be on the General Price List. However, if all their cremations have to be transported to this distant site, that cost is probably included in their charge for cremation.