Insurers in Arizona

[magalahi]

I'm not having any luck finding insurance in Arizona for my under construction skoolie. Im an older driver with a perfect record looking to get coverage as a bus until the conversion is complete and a new RV title can be issued. If you're an Arizona bus owner and have a source for insurance, please contact me.

[Rivetboy]

Can you get a licensed vehicle appraiser to come and look at it and give you the required paperwork to retitle it as a motorhome. After, of course, you put an air mattress, a sink, a dry toilet and a Coleman stove. And throw some money at him. Then after it is registered as an RV you should be able to get liability insurance on it with a phone call and no inspection. Thats how we did it in CA.

[rossvtaylor]

Where in Arizona are you? We're up North, near Flagstaff, and I'm happy to chat about options we've found. Feel free to send me a message and I'll give you my cell number.

The short summary is, like RivetBoy said, registering it as an RV/MH is your best bet. We've used Progressive (for a "commercial vehicle for personal use") policy while the bus was still a bus, but that's more expensive than RV or motorhome insurance. We also used The Hartford for that in the past, but then they quit issuing those.

For a converted bus, we've used Progressive and National General and Farm Bureau at one time or the other. I understand that Allstate will also issue for those, but we're pretty happy with Farm Bureau for now so I haven't looked into Allstate myself.

Your conversion doesn't have to be fancy, you just need some of the items on the Arizona MVD list. For our first one, I used double-stick tape to adhere a Coleman stove to a counter for the "cooking" option. Then when we got it home, we ripped it off and moved on with the real conversion. Now, we've gotten all fancy and have a motorhome conversion module that we carry inside the bus, screw down, and drive to the inspection place. We have had really good luck with the third-party MVD offices in AZ.

If you're close enough to Flagstaff, we could probably help you with this...but it's easy to do yourself. Once you have a MH title, you're golden.

[rossvtaylor]

Sorry to post back to back...but the quick reply wouldn't let me post a screenshot. Here's what required in AZ.

[Simplicity]

I'm literally going through my insurance process now.

As mentioned in an earlier post, commercial for personal use is pretty available. I got mine through progressive. It's pricey compared to RV insurance. You might want to ask about your agents willingness / ability to switch from driving to non-driving coverage if you will have times when you're not driving the bus during construction.

State Farm appears to be much more skoolie friendly. Another guy in WA turned me onto State Farm. I was totally up front with the agent. His new business gal has been tremendous.

While I'm still working with my current agent (not state farm) and state farm to get their quotes as apples to apples as possible, I'll tell you this. State Farm is currently $500 lower in my home insurance and over $500 lower in RV (skoolie) insurance. The difference will be less once they up the coverage to match my current insurance. Yet, I'm thinking by switching from my current to State Farm, I might save over $800 a year!

If you call a state farm agent, tell them you know they insure buses that qualify as RVs because there are all sorts of people on online forums that are insured by state farm. This seemed to help in my case. Also, tell them all you've done. I told them about my bed, composting toilet, kitchen, etc.. I sent them pictures of my propane tank, kitchen counter, cook top, sink, plumbing, gas pipe manifold, water and electrical inlets, etc. That was all they needed. Never asked for pictures of the bed or toilet.

They will want a value. I sent them my appraisal, receipts for upgraded rear end, estimated costs of all my construction materials, appliances, operations (plumbing, electrical, etc.), and of course my time (which would add up if you had someone else do all the work) to come up with a 15k - 20k value. Some other owners say they are covered for 35k.

As soon as my quotes are fairly comparable, I'll simply pick one and badda boom badda bing, I'm insured!

Hope this helps.

[magalahi]

Thank you all so much for the information. Im gonna get on this and make it happen!

[Ir5m4r7]

I bought my bus out of state (missouri), it is already titled as a motorhome, but I have no legal residence anywhere, and am trying to become an az resident, to include insurance etc. My bus is pretty much as built as I care to have it, and it does include 4 of the things on the list above, but I don't have any kind of address to list as "where the vehicle is garaged". Anybody have ideas on where to go from here?

Sorry to revive such a dead post, but it felt relevant