Orcasional Musings | Car and title: What about that?

Friends, Orcasians, Washingtonians, lend me your time. I come not to praise the Department of Licensing (DoL), but to condemn its voracious need to bury us in paperwork. The evil that bureaucracy does lives malevolently forever, while the good is often hidden beneath mountains of meaningless forms. And so will it be with the DoL.

I know of no other state in our union, in which private enterprise provides as necessary an intercession as it does here, south of the border, down Washington way. According to a friend who deals frequently with the DoL’s maddening bureaucracy, it is a far, far better thing to trust in the intercession of private enterprise, than it is to do battle with paper-shuffling aparatchiki on their home turf. And to that end, there are private businesses, called vehicle licensing agencies, scattered about the urban centers of The Evergreen State which will, for a very modest fee, advise you of the DoL’s requirements, review your paperwork submissions, and then complete your transaction for you.

I became aware of this idiosyncratic form of Washington State private enterprise when our children gave my wife and me the gift of a strong and sturdy, “new” 2012-vintage car, to replace my wife’s decrepit 1991 model, now entering automotive senility and about to breathe its last. It is very difficult to transfer the ownership of an out-of-state car to a Washington State resident. The new owner must present stacks of carefully-filled-out paper, as an absolute requirement, but even the state’s own DoL website does not openly and transparently list each and every form that the state desires. This is where the private vehicle licensing agency comes into the picture. They know what you need, and they will tell you what it is, either over the ‘phone or, in some cases, by e-mail. You can arrive pre-warned, pre-primed, and prepared.

Speaking of idiosyncratic, immediately as we received my wife’s “new” car, her old one became what we Orcasians call an “island beater,” a vehicle which is just about to fall apart, but still has a little bit of transportation value left, which someone can use for as long as it lasts. My wife’s island beater went to a friend, who paid a small, reasonable price for it. Then, our friend’s own island beater, older and even more decrepit than ours, was given as a gift to someone else, who promised to give it a good home for as long as it would run. And that’s how things are done on Orcas Island.

Even having been prepared by the vehicle licensing agency, on our first visit we were judged to be two sheets of paper short of a complete library. It’s a good thing that we had other fish to fry, on that particular trip to the mainland, since we would have hated wasting a $50.00 ferry ride for nothing. It took almost two more weeks to get our hands on those two pieces of paper! I can’t say that it was the licensing bureau’s fault, because I had forgotten to tell them that the car was a gift, which materially changes the rules. We completed the job on our second $50.00 voyage, with time left over for a Costco run. Our children’s car was now ours.

While we were at the licensing bureau, we overheard one of the clerks, as she dealt  on the ‘phone with a dissatisfied customer. He was evidently using a bit of vociferous and extreme language, and the clerk just wasn’t having any: after he’d received her second warning, she summarily hung up on him. My personal observation, after fumbling our own paperwork on our first visit, is that it wasn’t the private bureau’s fault. The DoL’s requirements are arcane, strict, and extreme, so if you don’t give the clerks exact and complete information, they will have to send you home empty-handed. We found the clerks to be full of useful information and explanations, they are polite and friendly, and, to the extent that you come clean to them, they are both patient and helpful. So don’t cuss them out. Smile and they’ll smile back, and before you know it, you’ll have your new car-title papers.