Some new El Paso County trucks need a weight slip

Moving to Colorado Springs with a pickup or larger truck adds one wrinkle that a passenger car does not have: the county wants to know what the truck weighs empty. Trucks that fall in a certain empty-weight range need a weight slip before El Paso County can register them. The slip is a simple document showing the vehicle’s unloaded weight, and it is the kind of thing easily forgotten until you are standing at the counter.

There is a clear exception. If the empty weight already appears on the title or registration, and the truck has not been materially changed, the slip is not required. So the first move is to dig out those documents and look. A factory pickup that lists its weight is usually fine. A truck that has been modified, came in from another state, or carries unclear title paperwork is exactly the case where the weight may be missing and a slip becomes necessary.

The weight slip is not the only new-resident item to line up. The same registration step can call for a VIN verification, and diesel trucks may need an emissions test as well. None of these is hard on its own; the snag is discovering one of them after you have already taken time off for the errand.

For anyone buying a truck rather than bringing one along, the weight question is worth settling before money changes hands. A vehicle that looks straightforward to title can still need that one extra document before the county will finish the transaction. The El Paso County new-resident page spells out which weights trigger the slip.