LONG STORY SHORT By Kristine McGowan  Once we settled on getting an Outdoors RV trailer [INSERT CHOOSING OUR RIG LINK], we came up against a problem: Very few dealerships in our area sold Outdoors RV trailers. And the ones that did typically didn’t sell the models that appealed to us. We could have given up on Outdoors RV and gone with a brand more widely available in Southern California. But as you might have learned from reading about how Jason determined our route for this trip, we’re not ones to give up easily. Instead, we decided we’d have to go where Outdoors RV trailers were easier to find: the Pacific Northwest. So Jason reserved an Airbnb for us just south of Seattle in early 2023. We’d always wanted to explore the Seattle area. Even if we failed to find a trailer, at least we’d get to see a place on our travel list, we figured. Fortunately, we did find a trailer. If you’re reading this, I assume it’s for one of two reasons: either you’re curious about how we got our trailer or you’re interested in purchasing an out-of-state vehicle via a private sale, like we did, and you’re wondering how to go about it. Here’s what the process looked like for us:
For more detail on how we handled each step, keep on reading below.  Shopping for a trailer or not, you can’t skip Pike Place Market on a visit to Seattle. 1. Find a TrailerEven before our three-day drive up to Seattle—with a cat in the backseat; ask us how that went sometime—Jason perused trailer listings online. The evening before we set out, he found a listing on rvtrader.com that made our eyes pop: a used 2022 Outdoors RV Timber Ridge 22FQS, privately owned and for sale in Vancouver, Wash. It seemed too good to be true. The exact trailer model we wanted, available at a lower-than-expected price because it was used? There had to be a catch. Still, we arranged to meet the sellers at their house and see the trailer on our way up to Seattle. They gave us tour—and we couldn’t believe it. The trailer was perfect for us. It appeared to have no damage. Despite being used, it even smelled new. That said, we didn’t want to rush into a sale. We’d reserved a monthlong stay at our Seattle Airbnb so we wouldn’t have to rush, after all. We wanted to consider all our options, and the sellers understood that. We promised to touch base with them within a week, to give them a sense of our interest in their trailer. In the meantime, we’d reach out to dealerships around Seattle and Portland, Ore., to assess our other options. It didn’t take long to sort out those options. Every dealership we approached told us the same thing: They couldn’t match the price of the used trailer we’d found. So we called the private sellers and told them we were seriously interested. But we weren’t ready to commit just yet. First, we needed help confirming this deal really wasn’t too good to be true.  Seattle isn’t a bad place to hang around while waiting for an inspection to finish, especially if Mt. Rainier pokes its head out. 2. Have the Trailer InspectedBefore you buy a travel trailer—new or used—it’s a good idea to get it inspected. Trailers are notorious for being built quickly and cheaply, and manufacturing issues may not come to light until you’re parked in your first campsite. If we only wanted a trailer for the occasional weekend trip, we might have skipped this step. But we were planning to live in our trailer, so we considered an inspection essential. After some research, Jason found an RVIA-certified inspector in the Vancouver area to inspect the used trailer. We talked it over with the sellers, and they were happy to let the inspector do his thing. All together, we arranged for him to inspect the trailer over a few hours one afternoon. The whole process cost us $1,000, and by the end, the inspector had sent us a mindbogglingly detailed report of what he’d found. When we got on the phone with him to review the report together, he summed it up along these lines: “This is the best-case scenario I’ve seen with new or used trailers. I can’t tell you what to do, but if I were you, I’d go for it.” So we did. We put down a deposit on the trailer a few days later. 3. Pay up and Get the TitleNow came the part I’d dreaded most: paying for the trailer. The sellers—being the lovely people they are—agreed to store the trailer in their driveway until our Airbnb stay ended and we made our way south again. When the time came, we met up at their house and settled in the trailer’s dinette to hammer out the details of the sale. We’d agreed on a price by then, and we’d decided to handle the sale amongst ourselves. You can hire a third party to mediate a private sale, thereby obviating the fear that the buyer will offer a bad check or the seller will grab the money and run, but we didn’t feel a need for that. Over several phone calls and texts, we’d gotten to know the sellers, and we had a good feeling about them. Besides, we were the ones from out of state. Frankly, the sellers had more reason to be nervous about us than the other way around. That’s why we agreed to hand over the check and let it clear before taking the trailer. (We paid for it in full, so we didn’t need to arrange an installment plan.) As a show of good faith, the sellers signed over the title to us that same day. I guess they had a good feeling about us, too. While we waited for the check to clear, we had a couple other things to do to prepare for bringing our trailer home.  Oregon’s generous 10-day trip permits allowed us plenty of time to explore the coast on our way south. 4. Get a Trip PermitNow it’s time for the steps we likely could have skipped had we purchased our trailer from a dealership. As I mentioned, the private sellers lived in Vancouver, so the trailer was, of course, registered in their home state of Washington. But once our check cleared and they handed us the keys, they’d remove the trailer’s Washington plates. To get new plates, we’d have to register the trailer in our home state of California—but to do that, we’d have to bring the trailer to a California DMV for inspection. And of course, we couldn’t do that until after we’d towed the trailer at least 350 miles south, to the first DMV across the Oregon-California state line, without plates or tags. Fortunately, most states offer—and require—trip permits for unregistered vehicles just passing through. Unfortunately, the parameters and requirements for trip permits vary from state to state. So we had to do some research. We were looking at towing our trailer from Washington, through Oregon, and into California, which could have meant getting three trip permits total. (Some states accept out-of-state permits, and some don’t. From what I can tell, you really won’t know until a cop pulls you over.) Here’s how we approached travel permits for each state we expected to travel through:
5. Have the Hitch Professionally Adjusted for Our TruckIn a stroke of luck for us, the private sellers offered to include their used Equal-i-zer hitch in the sale. Did I mention how great they are? Before we could use the hitch to tow our trailer, though, we had to adjust it for our truck. We didn’t have the equipment or the expertise to handle that, so at the sellers’ suggestion, we had Camping World adjust and install the hitch. The process cost us several hundred dollars, but hey, at least we knew we’d be towing safely. Getting the hitch adjusted at Camping World also worked well logistically in terms of the sale. The nearest Camping World to Vancouver, Wash., where the private sellers lived and stored the trailer, was across the river in Oregon. We couldn’t get the trailer there ourselves—we needed the hitch adjusted first, right?—so after our check cleared, the sellers towed the trailer to Camping World for us, and we met them there with our truck. Exchanging the trailer this way meant killing two birds with one stone: We could get the hitch installed, and we wouldn’t have to worry about getting a Washington trip permit, now that we had the trailer in Oregon. Once Camping World adjusted and installed the hitch on our truck, we were on our way.  Our very first campsite with our new trailer was cozy—but don’t ask how many tries it took us to back in successfully. 6. Register the Trailer in Our Home State and Pay Sales TaxNow we arrive at the most painful part of the process. Getting the trailer to California was surprisingly easy, even for towing novices like us. Getting the trailer registered, though? Not so easy. To register a vehicle in California that was previously registered in another state, you have to bring the vehicle—whether it has an engine or not—to a California DMV for inspection. You also have to show some paperwork. For us, that included the following:
We gathered that paperwork and got the trailer to our local DMV easily enough. The hard part, though? Our DMV doesn’t make appointments for registering vehicles, so we just had to get in line and wait. When our wait ended—a good two hours later—we filed all the paperwork and finally handled the most painful part: paying sales tax. That’s how it works in out-of-state sales. You pay sales tax in the state where you register the vehicle, not the state where you bought it. For us, that meant paying 7.75% sales tax on the one of the biggest purchases we’d made in our lives. Ouch.  The process for buying an out-of-state vehicle via a private sale may seem overwhelming at first, but in reality, it’s not too bad. The most time-consuming part for us was the research. In the end, we saved a lot of money by going this route instead of purchasing a trailer from a dealership.
Now, we couldn’t be happier with our new home on wheels.
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