State patrolmen are trained to validate the license plates on commercial vehicles by accessing an online vehicle registration table. Every vehicle which has been licensed and titled is listed there, and the plate assigned to the licensed and titled vehicle is shown, confirming the validity of the plate.
So what happens when a vehicle is not licensed and titled?
The answer may be chaos… because a high percentage of state patrolmen have not received any training about unlicensed, untitled vehicles: the vehicles moved by MTI. When the officer enters your transporter plate into his table, the result he gets is INVALID PLATE.
In fact, the plate is NOT invalid.
New vehicles which have never been licensed and titled, and vehicles taken out of service because they have been sold or are being transferred to another location, owner, even country are not in the ONLY index used by State Police. In fact, there is NO INDEX of vehicles moved with a transporter plate – as these plates are issued to a motor carrier – not a specific vehicle – and are distributed to drive away drivers for use on every vehicle that each of them delivers.
This is what must be explained IF you are ever in the position of having your transporter challenged and are threatened with a citation for operation of an “unregistered vehicle”.
All of the vehicles we transport are unregistered; this is why we use a transporter plate. It is for this purpose that the transporter plate is intended.
