"Nirvana" by REM Photo Off & On is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
We’ve covered a lot of oddball vehicles here at Dirt Legal, and to a surprising degree, we keep getting questions (and customers) who have even stranger stuff to title or register. An interesting twist in Powersports is watching the star rise for school bus conversions. We generally mean Skoolies (or Schoolies, or even Skooli if you will), but then we find a few…modified versions. Unfortunately, we don’t really have a name for them. Converted toy hauler? Cumbersome. MulletWagon? Maybe.
Whatever you want to call them, they are here, probably have been here for a long time, and aren’t going anywhere. But don’t you have to register it as a commercial vehicle? No sir. But that’s putting the cart before the horse just a little bit. Let’s back the truck up and start from the beginning.
What Am I Looking at Here?
The cool thing about school buses is the constant supply of samples hitting the market. As long as children go to school, school buses will be used. And school districts like to keep their fleets fairly current, a good thing considering they haul our children around. Also, generally speaking, later models are more efficient, a real boom for districts that are pinching pennies.
So the fleets sell off their aging buses after a few years to make room for newer models. These are often sold on public auctions and picked up for various uses.
One of the most popular uses for leftover and used school buses is Skooli conversions.
Now, I will take my liberty as the author to talk about my feelings toward Skoolies. As an above/novice RVer (bumper hitch travel trailer), I love the Skooli concept.
Look, RVs have their place. An RV is awesome if you plan to drive 30 minutes to the local lake for the weekend and the 4th of July. They are comfortable, relatively easy to pull, and simple to operate. But they are not built to last. There are no solid figures, but the average is 10-15 years. Obviously, with care, they can last a lot longer. But a decade or so seems about right.
However, they only hold up some of that well if you plan to travel a lot with them. The axles, bearings, and tires are the bare minimum for the max gross weight of the trailer, and let me tell you, if you buy cheap trailer tires from Walmart, they do not last long. Out of my 4,000 or so miles in a year of RVing in 2020-2021, I blew all four tires somewhere along the way, one of which was lost entirely (wheel and all) in Oklahoma City when all five lug bolts sheared.
Pucker factor: extreme.
While this story is entertaining (looking back, at least, totally terrifying when it happened), it illustrates that RVs are not built to last.
"File:Skoolie Livin School Bus Conversion.jpg" by Rupshare is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
On the other hand, they built school buses to handle the worst. They seat 40-70+ people, including high school football teams. You would be incorrect if you think a bus will handle 50 beefy teenagers but not your twin pullout sleeper sofa, which is one reason why so many buses are converted to RVs.
But again, while Skoolies are awesome, that isn’t what we are looking at here. Instead, we’ve found dozens of examples of something new; a Skooli hybrid, if you will.
A Mullet on Wheels
MulletWagon is nice.
One of the great things about a school bus is that it is really long and built of heavy running gear. If you take an average of 160 pounds by 50 passengers, you’re at 8,000 pounds of butts. If you’re hauling a football team averaging 200 pounds each, that’s 10,000 pounds.
We’re not getting into a gross vehicle weight rating discussion or anything in-depth like that. It’s just stating what we all grew up with. And they did it in the mud, snow, or whatever with an additional several hundred pounds of gear onboard as well.
Most Class C buses are 15,000-20,000lbs empty with max gross weights of 30,000lbs to 33,000lbs so that you can get up to 15,000lbs of cargo capacity.
Why is this important?
Because of toy hauler stuff, that’s why.
A popular option is to shave off the back of the bus and do one of two things:
Leave the back end open and use the back half as a flatbed hauler. That could be fine in Florida or Alabama, and we even found one in Iowa, but that seems a little rugged in the northern states.
You can cut off the back cap of the bus and move it closer to the front, preserving the enclosure but still leaving as much flatbed as you want for hauling stuff.
It’s a School Bus Still...Right?
Well, shearing off half of the skin doesn’t change the vehicle's legal composition. It is still whatever the title says it is until you change it. And think about doing that because keeping it as a commercial vehicle has real disadvantages, not the least of which are needing an air brake endorsement or a full-blown CDL.
RV Registration = No CDL Requirement
"skoolie" by shalommama is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
The beauty of an RV registration and title is that there is no CDL requirement for an RV. It is not a commercial vehicle, so there is no commercial license requirement.
However, your Skooli or converted Skooli-toy-hauler-hybrid-thing will not be sold as an RV; you have to specify that with the DMV and make sure they change the title to RV. Or, as we have seen in some states, consider titling it as a flatbed truck instead of a bus. This is because most states have a minimum requirement of items needed to be considered an RV, like seating for less than 16, interior heat and air that aren’t produced by the engine, and other miscellaneous items.
How Can I Register It As An RV?
Every state has different rules, so we can’t speak to how your home state will view a school bus conversion.
If they are amenable, awesome! If they aren’t…keep reading.
What If My State Won't Do It?
Consider an out-of-state option if your home state doesn’t let you title your MulletWagon as an RV (or flatbed truck).
If you want the registration to be issued at your home address, then our South Dakota RV registration services are right up your alley. South Dakota only charges a 4% sales tax, which makes them one of the cheapest states to go through.
Also, you can go through a Montana LLC if you are concerned about your home state taking a dim view of your title and registration being from out-of-state. Montana’s sales tax rate is 0%, a nice benefit if you plan to establish your vehicle in Montana and keep it there on a permanent registration, which most skoolies will qualify for.
But the vehicle is still out-of-state, right? Correct.
Then how is it any different, you ask?
Because the LLC owns the RV, not you. Even though you own the LLC.
The Dirt Legal Advantage
Look, if you want to drive an inverted mullet, more power to you! But titling and registering it can be difficult if you don’t know how to work with the DMV. And frankly, why go to all the trouble? We will deal with it for you and probably save you in sales tax and possibly use tax and TAVT.
But mostly, we will save you the frustration of explaining your case to the DMV, hoping they listen and understand what you want. Instead of leaving empty-handed, you can click a few buttons, sign a few forms, and get a fresh tag and registration. And really, that’s what it all comes down to anyway.
If you have questions about your title, give us a call, and we’ll see what we can do for you!
John McCoy is a lifelong car and truck enthusiast and has a strong mechanical background off the road. He spent over 13 years in the U.S. Air Force as a crew chief, assigned to the B-1B Lancer, affectionately known as the Bone to those in the community, and the KC-135R Stratotanker. He resides on a small farm in Eastern Kansas where he (sometimes) enjoys fixing ancient farm equipment.