Licence Plates

[Michael Madill]

Does anyone know how to deal with renewing plates while on the road for more than a year.
My wife son and I are leaving on a one year trip to South America fro Canmore
Alberta and back but I am not able to extend if there is more than six month remaining on the existing plates , they told me to give a friend a photo copy of my plates and insurance and have them renew and currier it to South America
I don't think they understand that it's not as easy as it sounds.
Does anyone have a suggestion.

Freedom Rider
Michael

[TravellingStrom]

Don't fuss about, they never look anyway, of course keep the thing current and have a freind color scan the new stuff and email them to you, you can print them out at a colour shop somewhere, but there is no need to courier anything like that.

I have seen some dodgy home made rego plates down there and they never look hard anyway, then just note the number for the documents.

[BlackBeast]

Hi Michael,
When is your departure date, must be getting close now?
I'm guessing you haven't heard Grant's story about his experience in trying to renew his Alberta rego. the correct way.
I came up with a fix for our BC registration, PM me for the details.

[Michael Madill]

Black Beast

We are leaving around the 1 or 2nd of Aug.

Freedom Rider
Michael

[Grant Johnson]

having been through this exact problem with Alberta many years ago - 1997 - here's the basics. (I doubt anything has changed)

Don't worry about the plate, it's irrelevant - the rest of the world is quite happy to see a plastic plate as used in Europe - as long as it has the right number you're good - and it won't have an expiry sticker on it.

However, the registration document IS a problem. NEVER go through a border with a registration document that has clearly expired. You CAN try to renew as suggested - have a friend go into the office and do it - however if it is discovered that the bike is out of the country, they can - and did in our case - refuse to renew it. Period, no discussion.

IF you can get it in writing from the MV office as noted, brilliant - but get it in writing!

Modern computers make short work of such problems...

[markharf]

Weeeeellllllll..... "never" is a long time. I've made my last three dozen border crossings (plus countless stops at roadblocks and other document inspections) with an expired registration. Finally someone noticed just the other day entering Honduras (or was it El Salvador or Guatemala? It all begins to blend....). I just apologized and handed them the current one, which I'd never actually opened. They never noticed that the driving license I'm using is also expired.

I'll ride without any license plate at all, and I'll use expired documents just to avoid sullying (or losing) the current ones, but I'll always carry the real thing with me. Sooner or later, someone notices and takes offense. Along similar lines, I finally had someone demand to see my title (distinct from my registration document) a couple of borders ago. That's why I've been carrying it for the past year. And a couple of crossings before that someone demanded my international driving permit--another first. You never know.

Hope that helps.

Mark

Edit to add: oh yeh, and with regard to photoshopping documents....In at least a hundred border crossings, I've only once been called on my use of a fake document: that was entering Ukraine. Again, I just apologized and handed the guy the genuine doc. Don't get too casual about faking it: there are weird watermarks, holograms, hidden lettering and other strange stuff built into a lot of government documents these days, and every so often you meet a person in a uniform who likes to check such things carefully.

[motoreiter]

Originally Posted by markharf

oh yeh, and with regard to photoshopping documents....In at least a hundred border crossings, I've only once been called on my use of a fake document: that was entering Ukraine.

haha, I had a close one in Ukraine too; I usually cross borders with a copy of my title (the original is getting a little tattered); at the Ukrainian border the guy spent fifteen minutes looking at it under an infrared lamp (or some kind of funky lamp), apparently looking for a watermark, and asked where my "other bike documents" were. When I told him that was all I had, he let me through but didn't seem very happy about it.

[TravellingStrom]

And if you are going to use a photocopied document, like I did with my CA bike Title , make sure you copy the BACK of it as well. ops: because of that, I had to bribe my way OUT of Honduras, lol. I soon got a new colour copy, double sided, never had an issue after that.

The original went missing between San Diego and Panama

Cheers
TS