Great! I'll send those over!
So what I read (somewhere on here) was that we should call up local diesel mechanics and get someone to go look at the bus before we buy it. We ended up finding our bus up in Birmingham, so we called a mechanic up there. He did a good job for the most part, but we think he forgot to check the tires because he told us they had no dry rot and they did. That ended up costing us a bit because bus tires are really expensive. But our local mechanic recommended a local tire company that gave us a good deal. Our local mechanic (in Pensacola) is a guy we found because a friend of ours works at a tax office, and she does his taxes. He came out to our house, looked over our bus, removed our wheelchair lift, removed our rear heater, disconnected our interlock system so we didn't kill our bus, took off the stop sign and front arm thing, etc. All for $150! We're very happy with him! It's possible you could find someone in your area by calling up diesel mechanics or school bus mechanics. Our guy happened to actually be a school bus mechanic.
Nope. No CDL. Umm... basically, driving a big yellow school bus, you're invisible. Nobody looks twice at a school bus. Once you register it as a motorhome, you don't need a CDL anymore in Florida. We called up Mark Blanchard (I think that's his name). We found his info right here on Skoolie.net. We told him where we heard about him, what we wanted to do, and he hooked us up with insurance. Easy-peasy. Then we drove the bus home. My wife drove right behind me, and I never went over the speed limit (which wasn't really a possibility anyway). Didn't have any issues, and we're not driving it again until we have it registered as a motorhome.
As far as temp registering it... I think Florida is one of the states that doesn't require a temp registration in order to drive it home? But I'm not totally sure. We bought ours in Alabama. But if you have your Bill of Sale in the cab with you, plus your proof of insurance, then if you DO get pulled over, you should be able to just show those things and say that you just purchased the vehicle and you're only transporting it home. I THINK that's all you need, but you'll want to confirm that. If for some reason a cop gives you grief about not having a CDL (very unlikely - few cops even know the rules about driving a bus), then just be respectful and play dumb. Usually the first violation is just a warning.
Once we got it here, we had a notary public (same tax lady) come and verify the VIN number, and whatever else she had to verify. We just called up the DMV and said, "What do I have to do if I need to register a new vehicle but I can't bring it in?" They told us what form to print out, and how to do it. Once the notary confirmed that the VIN on the bus matched the VIN on our Bill of Sale, we took all that info and the title to the DMV, registered it as a commercial vehicle for private use, and got our plates and a new title! We happened to get a very nice person at the DMV, but typically the nicer you are to them, the nicer they are to you. If you get a jerk, just leave and come back when it's someone else. The DMV here in Pensacola tends to have nice people, believe it or not.
As far as I know, the water/electric systems don't have to be super complex. I saw one post on here where someone registered it with just a water jug over a bucket. I think they don't even inspect. We were considering a gravity-fed water system (5 gallon tank) and a bucket under the sink. We're not sure yet though. We still have a while before we even get to that point. We aren't bothering to officially register as a motorhome until the conversion is complete. But I'm pretty sure it doesn't have to be super complicated.
Anyway - hope this helps! Yeah, I think there are a few others on here from this general area. I know Florida seems to have a big Skoolie population.
