What is a Vehicle Subagent?
A Vehicle Subagent is an individual or individuals recommended by their County Auditor and appointed by the Department of Licensing (DOL) through an open competitive business proposal process.
Each Subagent office is a business entity with unique owners and employees. These subagencies operate their small businesses in Washington to perform vehicle and vessel licensing services for the Department of Licensing and Auditors, but are not a branch of either state agency.
Subagents work as independent contractors with DOL and the 39 County Auditors to meet all of the vehicle and vessel licensing needs in Washington State, paying for all of their business expenses and costs out of the revenue earned through service fees. Subagent offices offer employment to local citizens who become contributing taxpayers in their community, supporting our grocery stores, child care centers, and many other local businesses
All your vehicle and vessel licensing needs in one convenient location.
We are the face of vehicle licensing in the community, providing title and registration services to hundreds or thousands of citizens per month. Each of the 134 private businesses are located in varying areas of the state to allow much needed access to our services for the public. We are open extended hours and on weekends to serve the public’s needs.
We serve a wide range of customer needs, including but not limited to;
– Issuance of tabs and license plates
– Processing new vehicle or pre-owned titles
– Helping grieving family members through the inheritance process
– Assisting out of state residents when moving to Washington
– Assisting those who need Disabled Parking Privileges
Vehicle Subagents across the state have worked hard and continue to work hard to maintain accuracy, increase services, and provide an outstanding customer service at hours that state agencies are often closed on. Longer hours, Saturday availability, the ability to meet growing demand by increasing staff, and the wherewithal to endure a pandemic and the multitude of change that came with it have shown that Subagents are responsive, reliable, and customer focused.
Information Hub for Communities
Vehicle Subagents do more than just process car tabs or simple title transactions. Subagents receive questions from drivers licensing, business licensing, utility bills, traffic infractions, to general community questions, and we’re happy to help as best we can.
Customers need and want face-to-face interaction, as evidenced by the number of transactions Subagents process, and the questions we answer. The beauty of the Subagent system is that each individual office becomes a local expert in their community, often employing bilingual and multi-diverse staff that meet the language needs of their surrounding area. It also means that Subagents know what services are needed most in a given community and act deliberately to meet those needs.
Because Subagents are members of the same community as their customers, they build valuable professional and personal relationships with the public that would not be possible without the current subagent system.
Where did Vehicle Subagents come from?
Vehicle Subagents were created as a cost-efficient solution to distribute the increasing workload of annual vehicle registrations and titling as motor vehicles gradually replaced the horse and buggy, while offering a convenient and accessible service for residents. The Vehicle Subagent system has been a great example of a successful and strong public-private partnership for over 60 years.
Vehicle Subagents stand in the gap between DOL and the public, and deal with questions, comments, concerns, grief, frustration, and many other emotions on a daily basis.
History of Subagent Creation
A brief peek at the historical transition from DMV to DOL
In the beginning, walking and the old horse and buggy were the only means of personal transportation for the average citizen. Then came the conception of the motorized carriage, a trend that was slow to catch on but soon grew to the massive proportions travelling on our streets today.
In 1937, when certificates of ownership were first issued, at the birth of the “horseless carriage,” only the Director of Licenses, which included auditors, could process them. There was no DMV or DOL back then. Those departments came later, in the teenage years of the industry. Initially, ALL renewals were done in January of every year, with a late payment penalty if you had not renewed your vehicle by February 15. This was possible because in the early childhood of motor vehicles, very few were being made available.
However, in 1955, the Director of Licenses had to start allowing registrations to be processed a year from when the title was issued because vehicle manufacturing and sales had increased to the point where there were too many to process in just one month per year.
Evolution at its finest…
Because of this rapid growth of the motor vehicle industry, the state/auditor agencies concluded in 1955 that they could not process all of the transactions within their agencies (especially once operator (driver’s) licenses were required in later years). In 1965, the DMV was created due to the overwhelming number of motor vehicles available.
There were so many titles to be issued, and then annual renewals to be processed each month, that the state could not do all of them on their own. There are currently 11,700,000 vehicle and vessel transactions processed every year – an average of 970,000 per month!
And out of the chaos, the Subagent was born!
When the renewal regulations changed in 1955 by SHB 87, the law also changed to allow Auditors to appoint special deputies.
It was deemed by the Director of Licenses to be more cost-effective and efficient to hire third-party “vendors” to assist Auditors in processing vehicle transactions than to apply to the legislature on an annual basis for new regulations and additional funds in their annual budgets for the number of state offices, with employees, benefits, and other operating costs involved that would be necessary across the state.
With third-party vendors, the state would have the resources to collect the fees from title and renewal transactions while passing off all of the operating costs necessary to perform those functions for the public to the vendor.
These third-party vendors were generally dealers or insurance brokers because they were an integral part of the titling process, but eventually those vendors evolved into the subagent system we currently have, through the collective efforts of WAVS.
But why are Subagents so imporant?
There are currently 134 Subagent offices in WA, strategically placed across the state by Auditors to best serve the population in each county. Collectively, there are approximately 800 employees that work in these subagencies. Subagents and/or office staff are required to work for at least 90 days before taking a 100-question exam to become a qualified title clerk. After passing the test, qualified title clerks must undergo 1800 hours of training to attain their title clerk certifications. Offices are held to a 95% accuracy rate and face serious consequences, including closure, if that mark is not met.
These offices process between 75-80% of all vehicle and vessel renewals and title transfers per year, approximately 8.3 million transactions, in a cost effective, accurate, and efficient way. Subagents collect all the fees required by the RCW on vehicle and vessel licensing on behalf of DOL and Auditors. They remit over $650M every year to the County and State and only retain the services fees.
These numbers increase a little bit every year and there is little to no cost to DOL or the Auditors for Subagents to process these transactions. Subagents pay all of the expenses and costs to operate a small business in WA out of the revenue earned through those service fees.
There are 49 County Auditor offices which process approximately 2.7M vehicle and vessel transactions per year, collecting roughly $200M on behalf of DOL and $12.7M for Auditors. DOL processes less than 750,000 vehicle and vessell transactions and collects a little over $11M on their own behalf and have only 18 offices in the state. Without the Subagent system, DOL and/or the County Auditors would have to process all of the tab renewals and title registrations that Subagents and their employees on behalf of the state, possibly tripling the annual budget required for the operation of County Auditor and DOL offices.