Arizona
Why U-Haul trucks all have Arizona license plates
An esoteric settlement between the 48 continental US states, Washington DC and all 10 Canadian provinces figuring out how big-rigs and different business automobiles that journey throughout state strains divvy up billions of {dollars} of license plate registration charges.
While you register your passenger automobile, you normally pay a small license plate price to your state DMV that goes to funding roads, bridges and different public infrastructure initiatives.
Such automobiles — often known as “apportionable automobiles” — are registered and licensed beneath what’s often known as the Worldwide Registration Plan (IRP), an settlement created between states within the Nineteen Seventies.
The IRP permits business vehicles touring inside the US and Canada to make use of one state-issued license plate and registration card however requires operators to pay charges to different states based mostly on what number of miles they drive in them and their weight. Some corporations hold monitor of miles manually whereas others use GPS techniques.
So U-Haul, which has been based mostly in Phoenix since 1967, registers all of its rental vehicles in Arizona and the state then distributes these license plate charges to different states the place the rental vehicles journey.
Say, for instance, one U-Haul van drove 20,000 miles in a yr. If half of the miles have been in Utah and the opposite half have been in Colorado, the charges can be cut up amongst these two states.
No free riders
Though most vacationers have by no means heard of the IRP, it was developed because the interstate journey system expanded.
The settlement eradicated the trouble of vehicles having to carrying separate license plates and cab playing cards for every state they traveled by way of. It was additionally designed to make sure that states bought a fair proportion of license plate charges from out-of-state automobiles that have been carrying down their roads.
“There are footage of outdated vehicles with 10 or 12 license plates on the entrance,” stated Tim Adams, the CEO of Worldwide Registration Plan, Inc., a company that oversees compliance with the settlement.
Round 3 million automobiles and 350,000 corporations have been a part of the IRP in 2021, Adams stated. They paid $3.5 billion in charges that have been used to fund freeway initiatives and security initiatives.
“It generates some huge cash for the highway funds every year,” he stated. The IRP is a “fluid settlement that also has goal.”
In reality, the settlement has labored so successfully that the Worldwide Gas Tax Settlement (IFTA), an analogous association between states divvying up business automobiles’ gas tax gross sales, was modeled after it.
So the subsequent time you are enjoying the license plate sport throughout a highway journey and hold passing U-Haul vans with Arizona plates, you may impress your loved ones by explaining why.