Reduce your registration cost (in PA, at least)

[ryun]

Disclaimer: This advice is Pennsylvania specific but I'd be surprised if dropping your weight class wasn't common in other states.

Short story:
As long as your truck is under 7,000 lbs unladen in PA there's a good chance you can reduce your weight class rating from Class 3 to Class 2 and save a large chunk of change on registration fees. Just keep in mind that it's illegal to haul more than the Class 2 weight limit (in PA that's 7000 lbs) and you could be fined if caught -- maybe worse (really not sure).

Check with your DMV or any auto tags place to see if you can reduce it. Saved me about $100 a year.

Long story
I'm a first time truck owner and when I got my registration renewal in the mail I was shocked at the $200 annual fee. Definitely a far cry from the $40-60 I'm used to paying.

I found out my truck was classified in 7,000 to 9,000 lb class 3 weight class, because when it was registered with the state PA or the dealer provided the GVWR to determine a weight class. The GVWR of my XLT SR is about 8000 lbs which puts it in class 3 essentially by default. Unladen my truck weighs about 6000lbs. I will very rarely haul 2000 lbs of cargo (including passengers), if ever.

Luckily, PA's guidelines are flexible and you can drop your weight rating down provided you agree to not exceed the upper limit of that weight class. For PA that's 7000 lbs in class 2. So I can haul up to 1000 lbs of cargo/passengers without trouble. Class 2 annual registration is ~$100 per year so shaved off half the amount just by filling out some paper work and mailing it to the DMV.

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[ryun]

Other thoughts:

• I have no idea if this same logic applies to commercial usage.
• If you buy a hummer EV or silverado EV with the giant battery pack it'll probably be classified as class 4 and registration would cost $262 annually. OOF!
  

 

[SmoothJ]

Interesting… need to find out what my truck was registered as and see if they are flexible.

With the new NJ EV law, you will now pay more per registration - starts at $250 in 2024 and increases every year to $290.

 

[Tony Burgh]

Does mean the state will ignore the 8550 GVWR on the truck’s door jamb sticker? What about if they can guess that I’m over 200 pounds and that puts the truck over 7000 pounds? Or am I never allowed to drive my Lightning again unless I lose 40 pounds?

Interesting thought concept but too much work to save $100. I would cost me 10X that to lose the weight. Not that I couldn’t use it but after 50+ years that I’ve had it I would miss that spare tire.

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