The DMV website has the info, but I had to search it out a bit. Short answer: Your camper must be PERMANENT.

http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/reg_hdbk_...comml_vehs.pdf

See page 13-4.

 

A pickup with a camper:
•temporarily attached is a commercial vehicle and the camper is a load.
•permanently attached meets the definition of a housecar (CVC §362) and may be registered as a passenger vehicle.
I appreciate the time you took, I cant give reps to you again but ya have some coming. Now, reading this, does this include shells? And if so what classifies it as 'permanently' attached?
DMV is so damned vague. I couldn`t find out so I guess it will be up to some mental midget at DMV

 

Does the DMV actually go out & look at your truck? They are too lazy up here to get off their butt here.

 

I don't see how they would catagorize a camper shell--even if it was somehow welded on--as a "housecar".

JMO but paying the piper here is less complicated and carries zero risk you will ever be cited for violating your license restrictions. Imagine having a sack of fertilizer in the back and getting a ticket for the violation and back registrations. That would be serious BS. Both ways.

 

The simplest solution I have to offer is to move out of California.

 

Yea, easy to say in sunny, warm Connecticut, a state the size of a pinhead on the map with only 3.5 million population, but still the 4th highest population density. Every one of your elected officials has a big "D" as of the latest info I see, so if you don't have all the BS we have here, it's only a matter of time and you'll freeze to death when they tax you out of your house vs. all I gotta do is find an overpass to sleep under... Plus if I move there I know no one and everyone gives me crap about being from CA. So yea, that's a flogging good idea.

Oh yea, your unemployment is only 8.5%, so what with your population and all, the line to find a job is only 4 miles long, vs. 5 here.

So to all you ice-belters, rust belters, mosquito/hurricane/dust/nowhere/nothing to do-belters that suggest that CA sucks, we should all move out because we can't run some de-smogged junker here, go pound sand and go stand out with the rest of the boys around some old oil barrel with a trash fire in it drinking cheap whiskey and dribbling tobacco juice on yourselves as you think about how it must just suck to have to put up with 80 degrees on January 15th and be told what to do now and again by our admittedly idiot state government all while someone brings up one of the reasons CA is in such trouble is our too-liberal welfare and after that some in the crowd get in their rusted out Pontiacs and grab the girlfriend & their illegit kid and head out here because it sure would be nice to collect welfare and surf all day vs. the hopeless despair of garden spots like Detriot or Newark or whatever widespot in the road where horses used to stop to relieve themeselves you might be from.

Other than that, great post!