Louisiana asks one thing of a private seller that most states do not: somebody has to watch you sign. A notary, or two witnesses and a sworn acknowledgment from one of them - and a title signed at a kitchen table with nobody else in the room is not a transfer, it is a piece of paper the buyer cannot use. Here is the whole thing, taken from the Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles' own pages and the forms themselves.
Start hereHow to fill out a Louisiana titleThe assignment block, the two ways to sign it, and the sworn acknowledgment that decides whether the cheaper way works.Open the walkthrough →Louisiana calls a title with a printed odometer block a conforming title, and where you have one, that block is the only place the mileage may be written. Handing in a separate DPSMV 1606 alongside it does not add belt to braces — the OMV's own instruction is that a separate odometer statement is not acceptable with a conforming title, and the file comes back.
The reading goes in whole miles with no tenths, and it goes on every assignment, not just the first. If you write the wrong figure and then correct it, no affidavit will rescue it: an affidavit of correction may not be accepted to correct odometer errors, and the way out is a fresh title issued back into the previous owner's name.
Model year 2010 and older: exempt once the vehicle is transferred at least ten years after 1 January of its model year. A 2010 truck passed that line on 1 January 2020.
Model year 2011 and newer: not exempt for twenty years. A 2011 becomes exempt on 1 January 2031, a 2012 on 1 January 2032, and the OMV prints the whole table out to 2021 in its own manual.
Exempt whatever the year: anything over 16,000 pounds gross weight rating, and anything that is not self-propelled — which is every trailer.
Office of Motor Vehicles, Section 4, Policy 80.00, Required Odometer Statements
You, the seller: Sign the assignment on the certificate in front of a notary, or in front of two witnesses. Print your name beside the signature, write the buyer's name and address, the date of sale and the price, and enter the mileage in the odometer block if the title has one.
The buyer: Signs the same assignment, then completes a DPSMV 1799 and takes the whole file to an OMV office, a Public Tag Agent, or the post. The buyer's signature is not the one that has to be watched.
AND or OR. Two names on the face of the certificate joined by AND means both owners sign the assignment. Joined by OR, either one may sign alone. Joined by AND/OR, both sign again.
That is the department's own rule as it applies it to titles coming in from other states, and it is worth checking the little word between the two names before anyone books a notary.
R.S. 32:706(E) puts it as flatly as a statute can: no person shall sell, exchange, donate, or otherwise transfer any ownership interest in any vehicle unless a title to that vehicle has been issued in that person's name. Signing over a certificate that still carries somebody else's name on the face — the car you bought and never registered, the one that came with the house — is not a shortcut. It is an offence carrying a fine of up to a thousand dollars, up to six months, or both.
Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles, title requirements
The full box-by-box walkthrough is here, with a printable checklist.
One truck, one buyer, one afternoon. These are the documents that make up an ordinary Louisiana private sale — the application the buyer files, the bill of sale that only matters when the price is not on the title, the odometer statement that only matters when the title has no block for it, and the notice you owe the commissioner fifteen days later.
A Louisiana lien is a mortgage recorded against the vehicle, and until it is terminated the certificate itself is sitting in a lender's file rather than yours. These two forms are the lender's, not yours — but knowing what they look like is how you tell a lender that has actually released the mortgage from one that has only said so on the phone.
The certificate is lost, the name on it does not match the name on your licence, or it went back to the state because the address was wrong. Every one of these is fixable, and none of them is fixed with correction fluid: an alteration on a Louisiana title voids it.
Somebody has to be at the counter, and it does not always have to be you. One of these forms sends a friend to hand your paperwork in; the other sends nobody, because it is not a power of attorney and says so in its own text.
A vehicle registered to somebody who has died does not move on a signature. What it moves on is a judgment of possession, a small succession, or the affidavit below - and then either a notarised bill of sale or an act of donation from whoever the heirs turn out to be.
Water, hail and total losses are Louisiana's own paperwork problem, and the state has more brands than most: salvage, reconstructed, water damaged, hail-damaged and certificate of destruction. These are the forms that put a brand on a record, take one off, or belong to the insurer rather than to you.
The plate is yours and the registration is yours, and neither goes with the truck. What is left after a sale is cancelling one, sometimes claiming money back on the other, and never doing either in the wrong order relative to the insurance.
Louisiana passenger plates belong to the owner, not the vehicle. Section 5, Policy 38.00 says it in one line: private auto license plates are not transferable between owners, and new metal plates are issued when the vehicle is transferred. So the plate comes off your truck before the buyer drives it away.
Cancel it, do not just bin it. The plate can be handed in at any OMV office, posted, or cancelled through the OMV's online service — and if you cancel online there is no need to send the metal in, but you are expected to take it off the vehicle and destroy it.
Cancel the plate before you cancel the insurance, in that order. Every registered Louisiana vehicle has to carry liability cover, so dropping the policy on a car whose plate is still live is what starts the insurance-cancellation machinery running against your name.
A prestige, personalised, mobility-impaired or apportioned plate is the exception: those move with their owner to another vehicle, and moving one costs a $3.00 licence transfer fee. Where a dealer takes the car in, R.S. 47:505(B) makes the dealer remove and destroy the ordinary plate — even an out-of-state one — and report it to the OMV by the fifth of the following month.
The OMV's web page opens with the words you may notify, which undersells it. The DPSMV 1697 quotes the statute behind it on its own face: R.S. 47:510(B) says that any person, upon transferring a motor vehicle, shall give a written notice of that transfer to the commissioner within fifteen days. The same notice can be filed online in a couple of minutes.
It flags your record the moment it lands, so anything the buyer does with the car afterwards is on a record that already says the car is gone. What it does not do is transfer anything — the form prints the warning itself — and ownership does not move until the buyer applies for a title. R.S. 47:537 sets the penalty for a Chapter violation with no penalty of its own at up to a hundred dollars, up to thirty days, or both.
Cancel the plate first, then the policy.
Louisiana requires liability cover on every registered vehicle, so an insurer's cancellation notice on a live registration is what triggers the fees. A plate surrendered within ten days of the cancellation notice date still waives them; surrender it later and it does not. Office of Motor Vehicles, Section 4, Policy 88.00, Voluntary Surrender of License Plates.
Office of Motor Vehicles, Section 5, Policy 38.00, Automobile License Plates
Register at an OMV field office, a Public Tag Agent, or OMV headquarters by post within five days of taking delivery, under R.S. 32:707(A) — while the money side runs on a different clock, because tax and fees are due within forty days of the purchase before penalty and interest start. Sales and use tax is the buyer's, worked out on the selling price at the rate for the parish the vehicle will live in, and the OMV collects it as agent for the Department of Revenue. R.S. 32:707(H) gives the buyer some cover in the gap: for sixty days after buying a used vehicle from a private individual they are protected from a citation for having no current tag, provided they can show proof of application.
What they need to bring:
Louisiana calls it a motor vehicle inspection and everybody else calls it a brake tag. It is a condition of registration rather than of sale, so an expired sticker does not stop you selling the truck — it lands on whoever registers it next. Owners choose a one-year or two-year certificate, except where emissions testing applies.
Stickers are sold to licensed inspection stations by the book, and a good many OMV field offices and some Public Tag Agents issue them directly. Office of Motor Vehicles, Section 4, Policy 112.00, Motor Vehicle Inspection.
Louisiana Office of Motor Vehicles · figures and rules as of 2026-08-23. Plain-language help with paperwork, not legal advice.
See also: selling a car in Louisiana and the rest of the guides.