Massachusetts Motor Vehicle Inspection Changes Go Into Effect November 1

Massachusetts’ new motor vehicle inspection rules begin on November 1, ending the age-old practice of holding off on a sticker to get an “extra month” out of the next one.

Did you know you’ll also no longer be receiving a printed inspection report, as you have in the past?

As of October 1, motor vehicle inspection stations are no longer providing printed reports when a vehicle passes inspection. Instead, you’ll be able to access your report online at the Mass Vehicle Check website or by scanning a QR code on a poster at the inspection station.

You will, however, still be given a printed report if your vehicle fails inspection.

When you think about it, this change makes a lot of sense; if your vehicle passes inspection, what do you do with the printed report? Personally, I just shove them into my glove box and forget about them until I get one the next time I pass inspection. Who really bothers to read them? This new procedure will probably save a lot of wasted paper.

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The most important change, however, is that starting today vehicles will receive a sticker with the number of the month in which it was originally due, not the for the month in which the inspection took place.

If your inspection sticker expired at the end of September but you waited until now to get it inspected, your new sticker will expire at the end of September 2023, whereas previously it would expire in October 2023.

Many people would wait a day, and instead of getting it inspected on the last day of the month it was due would instead get it inspected a day later, on the first of the next month, so that they would gain a “free month.”

The days of that motor vehicle inspection "hack" are now over.

Also, if your inspection sticker expired in a previous calendar year, your new sticker will be a January 2022 sticker, meaning it will expire in January 2023. So if your sticker expired in, say, November 2021, the sticker you get as of November 1, 2022 will expire in January 2023 – so you’ll only get a few months before you’ll need to get a new sticker.

Newly-purchased vehicles still must get inspected within seven days of purchase and will receive a sticker for the month in which it was inspected, valid for one year.

Of course, anyone who gets a sticker within the month it is scheduled to expire will still receive a sticker for that same month that is valid for one calendar year.