South Dakota DOR Suspends Printing Car Title Certificates Until Early 2023

  • 2 min read

So there’ve been various delays in vehicle title issuing, and here’s a really good example of how and why it might take longer than usual to get a vehicle title. 

From South Dakota, there’s a news article where vehicle owners may find themselves waiting a long time for printed titles. Why is that? Well, the South Dakota Department Of Revenue, which handles motor vehicles, will no longer be printing paper titles due to paper supply issues. Often people will think that title certificates are just printed on blank paper. The problem is the paper used for titles has built-in security features just like paper money to prevent fraud. The printing is said to resume sometime in February of 2023. Well if you’re a vehicle owner and you need a title, how’s that gonna work out for you? 

Remember a title certificate is not a document just printed on blank paper. It’s printed on security paper just like paper money or another certified document. The reason these documents are so secure is that whoever has their name on the title is the legal owner of the vehicle. So if a vehicle is worth $10,000, a vehicle title certificate with your name on it is the equivalent of a $10,000 bill. In addition, you can’t buy one from a company, you can’t download one from the internet in the same way you can’t buy or download a hundred-dollar bill. It’s something that is a security instrument issued by a government agency. If the government agency can’t get you one for four or five months, you’re not going to get one somewhere else if you live in South Dakota.

So if you need a vehicle title and you’re in South Dakota, you may be in for a long delay. You do want to get your application in because they’re going to print them in the order they were received, but a vehicle title certificate is a legal government document issued only by a government agency. You can’t buy one from the internet. You can’t download one from the internet. You have to get it from a government agency.


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