Hey...I'm going to be working in the Canadian pavilion (f&b) starting April 25th. I am planning on driving my car down from Ontario and wondered if anyone knows if I will be able to keep my Ontario plates and insurance for the full year, or will I have to register my car in Florida?
I'm pretty sure you need to re-register with new Flordia plates as well as get insurance. I'm almost certian I read that on this site from one of the pages on the left side (not in the forums).
Hi Kimmie, I was trying to do the same thing back in '04. I don't know that any Ontario insurance company will give you insurance for that long a period in the U.S. Mine was 30 days max!! Grrr! I hear it's better for other provinces though. So here's the scoop. You'd need to get a FL license as soon as possible as it's policy of the Commons. Luckily for us canucks, there's no test or anything required. You choose either a full U.S. license and must surrender your CDN one OR you can choose just a FL state license and keep your CDN one. (At least that's what I remember??) And about plates/registration. Basically, if you don't get insurance to cover you in the U.S. for a year, you will need to switch everything over. I know what a pain right ? You have to decide if it's worth it or not. It can be costly depending on how honest you are too. If you register your car for it's actual amount you could pay a whole whack of money. If you lie(because how could they know how much you 'bought' your car for in Canada??) you could get a better deal on registering but your insurance would be different than if you said it was worth more. Anyways, I think that's how it works. I think you can drive for a certain time with your FL license and keep ON plates for a bit, but apparently you should change them if you don't want to get in trouble should you get 'caught' I'm no expert in this area, but I hope this helps you out a bit.
Hey Kimmie, I drove from Saskatchewan and so I've been through the whole frustrating and expensive process of getting your car registered/insured/licensed in Florida. You need to get Florida plates and registration and insurance to be able to drive the commons (I think it's after 30 days). The only way that I know out of that is to know someone who's leaving who has a car, and get them to give you their windshield sticker (so that the guards let your car in)... but that wouldn't cover you for the whole time, because they change the sticker colours every few months. It's expensive to take your car down, but there are some loopholes. Insurance was very expensive for me (twice what I pay at home), but that depends on your age and car too. Despite the cost, it was DEFINITELY worth it to have the car there for a year. (coming home was a pain, too... expect headaches)
