Stopped By Bureaucracy

Eager to get on the road, we drove straight from the dealership to the Title office. We got an instant taste hurry-up-and-wait! The process to register takes weeks.

The Delays

We purchased our RV out-of-state and planned on registering it back at home. The problem was that my credit rating was high enough that the dealership pre-approved the loan without funding it.

Approving the loan instantly is normally a good thing. However, for our adventure this caused delays in processing our paperwork. The dealership sat around on the paperwork the next week for days before they funded the note. This added more delays.

Buying In California

We purchased the RV in California. California does not allow the purchaser of a new recreational vehicle to take direct delivery within the State of California if you intend to register out-of-state. The dealership hires an independent driver to drive you out of the state. You ride along with the driver until you leave the state and then take delivery right as you cross the border. The dealership does not provide any sort of dealership license plate.

You take delivery on the border. You have your brand new vehicle. Now you are driving across the country without a “dealer tag” or valid license plate to your home state to register your vehicle.

The Paperwork We Did Not Know We Were Missing

What they didn’t tell us is that since they had not funded the loan and since the loan was approved purely based on my credit score, they did not include the MSO in our paperwork. We show up at the Title office and they politely inform us we’re going to have to wait three to five weeks.

While we are at the tag and registration office we tried to purchase a temporary license plate. Our registration state does not provide temporary tags. In this state, the dealership gives you the temporary tag, and the law allows you a grace period. Ultimately, we purchased the vehicle in a different state that would not provide tags and now our own registration state would not provide a tag.

We do not have a license plate and can’t get one.

Getting On The Road

It takes the dealership two weeks to process our paperwork, get the loan funded, and then send the Certificate of Origin to our registration office. They also had to send the tax payment. The paperwork finally arrives in our tax office and takes ten more days to process. Five weeks to get our license plates.

We picked up our license plate today. The journey begins now…