We're moving to Texas!

...in a way.

A few posts back I wrote about how California requires a Class A license to pull trailers with a Gross Vehicle Weight Rating over 15,500 pounds. We pretty much resigned ourselves to Steve having to get his permit, borrow a fifth wheel and a person with a Class A license, and take what is essentially a Commercial Driver's License test.

Then my mom suggested that we establish residency in Texas.

Now, this wasn't a completely off-the-wall idea (though she is prone to those, too) because our plan all along was to establish residency in Texas once we hit the road in March. The reasons for this are mainly two-fold:

1. No state income tax. I'm not going to lie: That's a big concern, especially coming from tax-crazed California.

2. No homeschooling requirements. Other than actually teaching your kid, you don't need to do anything else. No paperwork to file, no registering with a school district, no testing, no attendance records, etc.

There is a full-time RV organization called Escapees, which is located in Texas. They have a mail service that will receive, sort, and re-send your mail to the destination(s) of your choice. For this, you are given a Texas address that you can also use to obtain a driver's license, register to vote, etc.

We hadn't really considered getting our Texas residency early, mainly because we hadn't really considered that we'd be going through Texas anytime soon. But since we're going to Ohio anyway, it wasn't a bad idea.

Then a snag arose: We have two cars (the Canyonero and a Honda Pilot), but would only have the truck with us. That would leave us in the legally tenuous position of having Texas drivers licenses, but a car registered in California, which could also raise problems with insurance.

We thought about having Steve get his Texas license while I keep my California one, but once we sell the house I wouldn't really have an address other than our mailing address in Texas, which again brought up issues with the Pilot.

Then I did some research, including making a phone call to the agency that handles vehicle registration in the county we'd be "moving" to. A human being answered the phone and immediately transferred me to another human being who answered my questions. She said there's no need to have the car with us to register it. They just waive the inspection requirement until we bring the car into the state. Problem solved!

Or so we thought.

See, we were under the impression that Texas doesn't have special requirements for towing fifth wheels. But upon doing more research, I learned that there is a Class A requirement if the combined GVWR of your truck and trailer is more than 26,001 pounds. The Class A test in Texas seems much easier than in California, but still requires a written test, plus driving and maneuverability exercises.

So Steve checked the GVWR of the Canyonero...and it is 10,500 lbs. The astute mathematicians among you will realize that 10,500 + 15,500 = 26,000 pounds: ONE POUND under the minimum that would trigger the need for a Class A.

I called the Texas equivalent of the DMV and was again greeted by an actual human. He confirmed that as long as we were under 26,001 pounds, we could tow with a regular license.

We still have a few things to look into (like finding out if our health insurance will be valid if we have a Texas address), but at this point it looks like we'll be turning into Texans relatively soon.