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Old 05-05-2019, 01:55 PM   #21
Skoolie
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Tucson, AZ
Posts: 105
Year: 1997
Coachwork: Blue Bird
Chassis: TC 1000
Engine: 5.9/AT
Rated Cap: 2 adults, 2 dogs
I went through National General. They told me they could do a pre-completion policy for non-commercial use or an RV policy. State farm, progressive both said no. I went to an independent broker that worked on it for 3 days and also couldn't help. Natl Gen is about $170/yr. Liability only. They wont do full coverage on Skoolies.

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Old 05-05-2019, 10:05 PM   #22
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Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Oregon
Posts: 6
Year: 1999
Coachwork: Collins
Chassis: Ford E450
Engine: 7.? liter diesel
Rated Cap: 14,900
Yeah, I really don't care if the insurance company thinks it's an RV or a bus as long as they insure it. I would expect "RV" insurance to be more expensive. The real savings (at least in OR) is getting the state to call it an RV as opposed to commercial. COmmercial is $147 every three months (!) but RV registration is only $240 for 2 years. That saves about $40/mo.
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Old 07-29-2019, 05:45 PM   #23
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Join Date: Jul 2019
Location: Oro Valley, Arizona
Posts: 2
Year: 2008
Coachwork: Chevrolet and Turtle Top
Chassis: C5500 chassis code C5V042
Engine: 6.6 Liter Duramax and Allison 1000 6-speed
Rated Cap: 19500 GVWR, 30 passenger
National General not underwriting MH / RV policies in Arizona now?

Quote:
Originally Posted by AZHippie View Post
I went through National General. They told me they could do a pre-completion policy for non-commercial use or an RV policy. State farm, progressive both said no. I went to an independent broker that worked on it for 3 days and also couldn't help. Natl Gen is about $170/yr. Liability only. They wont do full coverage on Skoolies.
When I contacted an agent here in Tucson today, I was told that National General is no longer underwriting NEW policies for RV/MH. Can anyone here in AZ that already has an agent with National General familiar with these policies please post their contact information?

Anyone who is joining this discussion and insured, could you please post more information about how you were insured and by whom?

For my conversion, I'm starting with a 2008 Chevy C5500 30 passenger shuttle that has a handicap lift located at the rear end of passenger side. I'm starting with a quick re-registration strategy so that I can register and insure the truck as quickly as possible as a RV. The problem I'm running into now is finding someone to insure a non-professionally built RV (DIY version) since I'm now being told National General has stopped underwriting these types of policies.
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Old 07-29-2019, 05:56 PM   #24
Skoolie
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Tucson, AZ
Posts: 105
Year: 1997
Coachwork: Blue Bird
Chassis: TC 1000
Engine: 5.9/AT
Rated Cap: 2 adults, 2 dogs
Quote:
Originally Posted by staceyslaw View Post
When I contacted an agent here in Tucson today, I was told that National General is no longer underwitting NEW policies for RV/MH. Can anyone here in AZ that already has an agent with National General familiar with these policies please post their contact information?

Anyone who is joining this discussion and insured, could you please post more information about how you were insured and by whom?

David Remillard
Licensed Agent
1100 NE Compton DR.
Suite 200
Hillsboro, OR 97006
David.Remillard@ngic.com
Office: (314.813.2975)




This is who I went through, haven't talked with him since. None of the agents here in Tucson I spoke with wanted anything to do with a skoolie
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Old 07-29-2019, 06:01 PM   #25
Bus Geek
 
Join Date: May 2016
Location: Eastern WA
Posts: 6,401
Year: 2002
Coachwork: Bluebird
Chassis: All American RE (A3RE)
Engine: Cummins ISC (8.3)
Rated Cap: 72
Quote:
Originally Posted by OldManDax View Post
Yeah, I really don't care if the insurance company thinks it's an RV or a bus as long as they insure it. I would expect "RV" insurance to be more expensive. The real savings (at least in OR) is getting the state to call it an RV as opposed to commercial. COmmercial is $147 every three months (!) but RV registration is only $240 for 2 years. That saves about $40/mo.
I have insured converted buses in Oregon and RV insurance was much cheaper. That was a few years ago . Perhaps things have changed but I would sure get some quotes for both.
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Old 07-29-2019, 06:05 PM   #26
Bus Geek
 
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Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Dawsonville, Ga.
Posts: 10,482
Year: 1999
Coachwork: Genesis
Chassis: International
Engine: DT466/3060
Rated Cap: 77
Quote:
Originally Posted by PNW_Steve View Post
I have insured converted buses in Oregon and RV insurance was much cheaper. That was a few years ago . Perhaps things have changed but I would sure get some quotes for both.
One issue I run into when shopping insurance is that many don't want to insure only your RV, they want your cars also. I will not leave the company i've been satified with for the last 29 years. What sucks more is my existing company wants a lot of money for the RV, probably won't go through them for the RV. I just found out if I take an online defensive driving course I can get another 5% off my rates. And another discount for adding the driving monitor unit.
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Old 07-29-2019, 06:12 PM   #27
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Join Date: May 2016
Location: Eastern WA
Posts: 6,401
Year: 2002
Coachwork: Bluebird
Chassis: All American RE (A3RE)
Engine: Cummins ISC (8.3)
Rated Cap: 72
Quote:
Originally Posted by o1marc View Post
One issue I run into when shopping insurance is that many don't want to insure only your RV, they want your cars also. I will not leave the company i've been satified with for the last 29 years. What sucks more is my existing company wants a lot of money for the RV, probably won't go through them for the RV. I just found out if I take an online defensive driving course I can get another 5% off my rates. And another discount for adding the driving monitor unit.
Yeah, multi line discounts are a big deal. I have seen a couple of members here move all of their auto and homeowners insurance to a new carrier in order to get the best rates.

AFIk: we use the same carrier. Here in WA RV insurance cost me around half of what commercial for personal on the same rig.

Crazy......
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Old 07-29-2019, 06:58 PM   #28
Bus Geek
 
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Join Date: Dec 2017
Location: Dawsonville, Ga.
Posts: 10,482
Year: 1999
Coachwork: Genesis
Chassis: International
Engine: DT466/3060
Rated Cap: 77
Quote:
Originally Posted by PNW_Steve View Post
Yeah, multi line discounts are a big deal. I have seen a couple of members here move all of their auto and homeowners insurance to a new carrier in order to get the best rates.

AFIk: we use the same carrier. Here in WA RV insurance cost me around half of what commercial for personal on the same rig.

Crazy......
My Progressive policy was only $171 for the year. I think State Farm quoted me in the $800 range.
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Old 08-14-2019, 06:01 PM   #29
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Join Date: Jul 2019
Location: Oro Valley, Arizona
Posts: 2
Year: 2008
Coachwork: Chevrolet and Turtle Top
Chassis: C5500 chassis code C5V042
Engine: 6.6 Liter Duramax and Allison 1000 6-speed
Rated Cap: 19500 GVWR, 30 passenger
Progressive Insurance help

I was competently helped get a commercial truck policy by:

Rhonda Quast
Account Manager
Haslett and Associates
520-327-6504 Office
520-323-0131 Fax
8375 N Oracle Rd Suite 100 Tucson, AZ 85704

Commercial policy is for liability only, which is minimum required here in AZ, $519 yearly, $441 if paid for the whole year in a lump-sum. Policy is effective 09August2019 to 2020 for those later reading this post.

I plan to convert my shuttle bus from a commercial 30-passenger shuttle to a MH via a Arizona MVD Level II inspection process already discussed by others. Updates to follow once I've got the MH title in hand and can legitimately insure as MH.
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Old 08-14-2019, 07:22 PM   #30
Skoolie
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Tucson, AZ
Posts: 105
Year: 1997
Coachwork: Blue Bird
Chassis: TC 1000
Engine: 5.9/AT
Rated Cap: 2 adults, 2 dogs
Good luck on the level 1 inspection. I did mine in January this year and it wasn't a bad experience at all.
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Old 08-14-2019, 07:29 PM   #31
Skoolie
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Tucson, AZ
Posts: 105
Year: 1997
Coachwork: Blue Bird
Chassis: TC 1000
Engine: 5.9/AT
Rated Cap: 2 adults, 2 dogs
Sent you the paperwork/policy from when I did mine
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Old 08-14-2019, 07:31 PM   #32
Skoolie
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Tucson, AZ
Posts: 105
Year: 1997
Coachwork: Blue Bird
Chassis: TC 1000
Engine: 5.9/AT
Rated Cap: 2 adults, 2 dogs
Sent you the papery/policy from when I did mine
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Old 10-03-2019, 03:04 PM   #33
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I just got my bus, and I'm trying to get it registered quick as well. So your little unit counted as Water, Cooking, Refrigerator and power supply?
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Old 10-03-2019, 10:19 PM   #34
Skoolie
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Tucson, AZ
Posts: 105
Year: 1997
Coachwork: Blue Bird
Chassis: TC 1000
Engine: 5.9/AT
Rated Cap: 2 adults, 2 dogs
Quote:
Originally Posted by Smashton View Post
I just got my bus, and I'm trying to get it registered quick as well. So your little unit counted as Water, Cooking, Refrigerator and power supply?

It did. As you can see in one of the pictures I just had a cheap mini-fridge strapped down next to the cabinet. Under the inverter was a single 12v battery and in one of the tanks was a $5 12v pump from Amazon that barely pumped water through the sink. The only problem the inspector had was he insisted it needed an "external fill" for the tank. But he let me go. He told me a hose through the door or window would not suffice.
Attached Thumbnails
Undercab1.jpg   Undercab2.jpg   undercab3.jpg  
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Old 10-03-2019, 10:22 PM   #35
Skoolie
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Tucson, AZ
Posts: 105
Year: 1997
Coachwork: Blue Bird
Chassis: TC 1000
Engine: 5.9/AT
Rated Cap: 2 adults, 2 dogs
Quote:
Originally Posted by Smashton View Post
I just got my bus, and I'm trying to get it registered quick as well. So your little unit counted as Water, Cooking, Refrigerator and power supply?

And I forgot to mention that he just looked at it, didn't test water, electric, propane or refer. He did shake the thing to make sure it was mounted and told me it has to appear as permanent. Good luck
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Old 11-15-2019, 08:21 AM   #36
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Originally Posted by miscrms View Post
Just wanted to share our experience with getting our conversion titled as a motor home and registered in Arizona. YMMV, but hopefully this is helpful to someone.

AZ is one of those states where you can't technically get it registered as an RV until the conversion is done. We have room to work on it in our driveway, but can't keep it there all the time without risking city code complaints. So we're bringing it home on the weekends to work on, and parking it at a storage place during the week. This normally would have meant having to register it as a commercial vehicle, and needing a CDL to drive it while we carried out the conversion so we could legally move it back and forth.

We really wanted to avoid that, so we set a goal of doing a "temporary" conversion as quickly as possible so as to try and get it converted over and registered before our temporary dealer plates expired. From the research we did, there are two main AZ laws and policies that are relevant to the process of converting a school bus to a motor home. The first is AZ MVD Policy 13.2.3, which establishes "standards for the titling variations specific to a motor home." I couldn't find this posted online anywhere, so here is a scan of the copy given to us by our dealer:





The second is AZ Rev Stat § 28-902 (2015) "Repainting government vehicle"
which states:
Code:
If a motor vehicle that is painted yellow and that is owned or operated by this state, a county, city, town or political subdivision of this state, a school district or a school is sold or transferred to a private owner, the private owner shall repaint the motor vehicle a different color and obliterate all official painted insignia before the motor vehicle is driven on a public highway.
To comply with MVD policy, we decided the quickest route would be to install an "all in one" type apartment / mobile home kitchenette unit and a battery power source. We also had a bit of a head start as our dealer had removed all the seats for us already. We found this unit on Craigslist for $130 that includes a refrigerator, electric stove and sink, which I wired up to an old UPS and some deep cycle batteries I had lying around. The 1500VA UPS runs the fridge just fine, but the burners are right on the edge and even one will sometimes trip the overload and shut down, particularly on battery. Not great for real use, but hopefully good enough for our purposes.



The unit barely squeezed in through the service door, and we mounted it by just popping a couple of screws up form the heater hose cover and screwing them back threw the back frame of the unit into their original holes. In general we tried to limit any cutting or drilling on the bus as this was all going to be removed again. The sink faucet was removed and replaced with a manual pump RV faucet.



Some of these units have enough space under the sink to mount water tanks, but this one is ver limited as the compressor is in that space. So we ran the hoses for the faucet, drain and an extension cord for the power down through an existing hole from the now removed roof air conditioning hoses and into the storage box below.



The big plastic tub contains the batteries and the UPS, to contain any leakage from the batteries. The whole thing is strapped down with a heavy ratchet strap to one of the brackets that originally held the AC drain hose.

We decided to try and blow off the ARS repainting requirement, as we really didn't want to have to paint yet.

We looked up online to find MVD locations that did vehicle inspections, and went to the Tempe office. The inspector was very nice and was excited that we were doing a "partridge family" thing with our bus ;) Unfortunately both he and I were unaware that the level 1 inspection he was doing was worthless. We later found out we need a level 2 inspection, which they don't do at Tempe. But we did learn there that we needed to get a smog test before registering, so we were able to get that done before attempt #2. The other thing they did which turned out to be helpful was research the "FCP" original sale price. AZ personal registrations are based on depreciated value, while commercial vehicle registrations are based on weight, so one of the challenges of the process was coming up with an original price for our 20 year old bus so they could plug it into their formula and decide how much to charge us. I was a little concerned about what that might work out to on a $120,000 bus even after 20 years, but apparently that's long enough to be ok ;)

Our second attempt was at the Mesa office where they do level 2/3 inspections and where I had previously gone for my CDL written test (just in case). Level 2/3 inspections are carried out by armed / uniformed MVD enforcement officers, not nice guys in sweaters who like the partridge family, lol. However, they were very helpful. They looked it over, but declined to inspect it (rather than charge us and then fail us) because it still "looked like a school bus." They said remove the "School Bus" signs, remove the fold out stop sign, and maybe think about doing something about the warning lights (though they probably would have let that slide) and we'd be good to go. So while it was a bit more time wasted it was very helpful to get this guidance, and a lot less time consuming than if we had decided to preemptively paint it.

So over the next week we removed the stop sign, disconnected the power to the warning lights, spray painted over the warning light lenses, and peeled off the "School Bus" signs with a heat gun and plastic razor blades.





We went back to the MVD office this morning, met the same officers, and they went right to it checking the VIN and chassis numbers, measuring the length and width and gave us our inspection pass! With that it was just a matter of waiting in another hour or two worth of lines to get our title transferred, and our new registration and plates!



All said and done it was $20 for the 2 year smog test, $20 for the inspection, and $73 for a one year registration.

Rob
Hi , Did you title it first and then return to get the registration, or did you do both; Title and Registration at the same time. Mine is insured commercial but not Titled or Registered yet. I still have one more week before I have to Title it. Did you need to get it weighed? So far all I have done is paint the red lenses black. I'm in AZ too. The Title I received from out of state seller just says: CAB CHASSIS and GM4GC3. Any more info is appreciated!
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Old 11-15-2019, 09:10 AM   #37
Skoolie
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Tucson, AZ
Posts: 105
Year: 1997
Coachwork: Blue Bird
Chassis: TC 1000
Engine: 5.9/AT
Rated Cap: 2 adults, 2 dogs
I did mine at the Tucson office. Because of time constraints I just titled mine right away as commercial. I didn't register it because that is quite expensive for a commercial vehicle. They required a level 1 inspection for the title change. I paid like $50 or 60 for that from a contracted MV service and they even came out to where it was stored. All the level 1 is was a quick check of the VIN, nothing else. Then I changed the title to my name at their office for a small fee. When I was ready for the conversion I scheduled a level 3 inspection at the Tucson ADOT office for commercial vehicles. They will only do them at specific offices that handle commercial. The level 3 is where they check all those things on the papers about heat, electric, water, and so forth. You can print out a 3 day use permit from the ADOT site for a couple bucks to drive it there. They did not inspect lights, mechanical, or anything else, just what was on the papers above. They actually walk out with those exact papers and read down the list. It was quite painless. After that I went inside and they changed the title to RV, went and got emissions test, went to a closer regular MV office and got my registration. Wasn't a bad experience. I got the first appointment of the morning and was home well before noon (including a stop for breakfast and a battery terminal repair). Good luck!
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Old 11-15-2019, 12:10 PM   #38
Skoolie
 
Join Date: Mar 2018
Location: CA, USA
Posts: 147
Year: 1992
Coachwork: sturdivan
Chassis: E-350
Engine: 7.3l IDI
Rated Cap: 10,000lbs
now that its titled and registered, what did you do about the insurance. Which corp will cover these things?
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Old 11-15-2019, 01:31 PM   #39
Skoolie
 
Join Date: Nov 2018
Location: Tucson, AZ
Posts: 105
Year: 1997
Coachwork: Blue Bird
Chassis: TC 1000
Engine: 5.9/AT
Rated Cap: 2 adults, 2 dogs
I use national general
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Old 02-04-2020, 07:31 PM   #40
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Join Date: Feb 2020
Location: Camp Verde, Arizona
Posts: 1
Year: 1998
Chassis: Prevost
Engine: Series 60 Detroit
Rated Cap: 32,000
Hi all, we are nearing the end of our bus conversion here in Arizona and I'm getting conflicting information on which level (1, 2 or 3) is required to change from "Bus" to "Motorhome".
Could someone please point me to any MVD publication that specifies the inspection level.
Thanks for your help.

P.S. I'm not converting a "Skoolie", I'm doing an old Prevost tour bus, but there's not a lot of resources out their for tour bus conversions.
I've followed a lot of Youtube videos and sites on "skoolies" and have been pretty impressed by some of the craftsmanship going into the conversions.
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