NC registration warning

When registering a tow vehicle in NC, beware what you are charged for your license tag. It is unbelievably difficult to find out the truth about how much weight you need to pay for on your tow vehicle's tag. When we registered our Cyclone, the tag office clerk insisted we had to pay for 100% of the weight of the RV as well as the weight of the tow vehicle. I told her I had called the NC weigh station and was advised that the RV's weight didn't count. She said this was wrong and charged us over $300 for our tag for 19,000 lbs weight (which was underestimated).

I finally was able to contact DMV in Raleigh and got the truth. You pay for the truck and everything in it plus the TONGUE weight only. The rest of the RV's weight doesn't count (unlike with a cargo trailer where the entire trailer's weight must be covered). Neither the weigh station employee nor the tag office clerk knew this, although the weigh station person was much closer to being right.

DMV initially didn't want to give us a refund for the overcharge. When I pointed out the mistake had been made by their employee who obviously didn't understand DMV's regulations, they agreed to refund the $180 overpayment. A satisfactory end to the story but it cost me a lot of time and effort.

Thats good to know, I have weighted tags on my GMC 2500 for 10k lbs so I am safe. This has been a topic for discussion several times with my friends but no one had a clear answer. Is there any inforamtion posted on the state website that can be referenced if there ever was a problem? I know I tried to research it several time and came to dead ends. Thanks for your help.

I looked everywhere on NCDOT's website for this information and found absolutely nothing. I finally emailed them using the contact information on this web page: http://www.ncdot.org/dmv/contact/ They responded promptly to my original request for information and to every subsequent email. There is also a phone number for DMV/DOT but my experience with that number over the many years I worked in the auto industry was that it was very hard to get through and you were liable to be put on interminable hold. Another advantage to email is having your answer in writing.

I should clarify something I said in my original post about the information I got from the weigh station. I cannot remember if I made it clear we had a fifth wheel when the person I talked to said RV's don't count for weighted tags. Since the tongue weight is what you pay for on a 5er because that weight is actually carried on the truck's rear axle, I don't think travel trailers are charged anything extra. However, considering how difficult it is to get the right answer on this, anyone with a travel trailer who has a question should consider emailing DOT for an answer in writing.

As I said yesterday, the website is a dead end for getting the information you are looking for. Thanks for the email link, I will send them a request just to see if I get an answer.