Shipping a bus

Can I ask why?

Hello,

Welcome on our forum, hope you'll enjoy it.

on a roughly basis, make the calculation and take contact with a shipping company.

Shipping it will only be the first issue, unless you plan to just put it into your garden as decoration: You cannot just import and use foreign cars in Europe - safety and other regulations are substantially different and extensive (costly) retrofits might be needed before you are allowed to register and drive it here. You better contact a car import agency for this, which has the experience and can handle everything for you (for a fee, of course).
The only very few US school buses I ever saw in Eurpe belonged to the US military, which is exempt from all the normal rules. This makes me think it cannot be done by normal people or it isn't worth the effort and cost. But please come back and post your findings here - I am curious, too!

I know of one such American school bus that is in the Stuttgart area. They fixed it up to be a mobile party bar and one can book it for events. I strongly suspect that they bought it from the US military which had used it for one of their schools run for kids of military personnel. Beyond the safety issues to have such a thing allowed here is the emission control regulations which are very strict. If it is a diesel then one can forget it; no hope at all short of switching out the engine. If it is gasoline powered then maybe but one will pay import duty on any vehicle coming from outside the EU even if no modifications are needed.

But obviously the only way to transport it would be by cargo ship. To find out the prices one would have to ask in America rather than in Germany. I have no personal experience with such things but I think there are companies that take care of such shipping and should (hopefully) know of the legal requirements. But if one is based in Germany, they might first look to see if they can’t find a bus already here.

I never watched but a couple minutes of it but there was a documentary (or maybe it is a reality show) on German TV about a couple of guys that have a junk yard and they specialize in used American military equipment. If such a place would have a bus, it would still mean verifying if the emission and safety standards allow it  but at least the transport and import duties would be out of the way.

Well I converted it into a RV and I’m living in it but I’ll be moving to Germany soon and would love to take my bus with .

It is not allowed to live in a RV in Germany.
And, as we explained above, it is unlikely that you will be able to drive it around.
So why bother?

beppi wrote:

It is not allowed to live in a RV in Germany.
And, as we explained above, it is unlikely that you will be able to drive it around.
So why bother?

Beppi is incorrect about this. I had a RV for 17 years and earlier had self-converted vans for another 7 years in Germany and often lived in them. Some people live in their RVs which they have a permanent place for on a campground. Or one can be parked elsewhere. Some local laws can claim one is not supposed to sleep in a vehicle on a public street for safety reasons but this is virtually never enforced unless one would be making an obvious nuisance of themselves. I paid exactly 1 night in all of those years to be on a campground. And if one is tired or incapacitated like from alcohol then they are not allowed to drive. The police will tell them to sleep it off and then drive on.

But like mentioned; the cost of importing a vehicle including the shipping and import duty is not likely to be cheap and the whole situation of having to pass safety and emission standards is very questionable. A few decades back such a thing was manageable but things have changed. Millions of diesel vehicles in Germany are suddenly not allowed to drive in cities like Stuttgart although having low emissions. I know people in the States or Canada with converted school buses but the obstacles here are huge.

I also see that you have posted the same question on multiple countries' pages. But it is not likely one can drive around any European countries with US registration and insurance. You would have to import the bus to a European country but for that you need to have legal residency plus, in Germany at least, you have to get a German driver’s license within a year. There is an exchange provision or partial one with some US States; otherwise it takes time and a lot of money to get a German license. And one is almost surely in a whole other category to drive a vehicle of that size and weight. My motorhome was at the border of allow-ability and nowhere near as long or heavy as a school bus. Even if you would exchange for a German license with permission to drive a car or van, you would likely have to get further licensing for a heavy vehicle. And that will likely cost!

I might not have expressed myself correctly:
I did not mean it is forbidden to sleep in a mobile home, but one needs a proper (registered) residential address - and registering somewhere "pro forma" is a punishable offense, which is even enforced nowadays. So what Tom (and others) did in the past is no longer feasible now.

Yes, as Beppi mentioned, one has to register an address. This is possibly a bit complex when one lives in a vehicle but not impossible. People with a permanent camping place for their vehicle just register there. Otherwise, one will have to find an address where they can. Say if a friend lets them register in their apartment then they could officially be living there even if they actually sleep elsewhere. Again, it is getting into a gray area of legality but it is not meant that the state looks where or with whom one might be sleeping with. And as an example, many students or young workers might move out of their parent's home but stay registered there. Such people might move around a lot and it is easier this way. The government doesn't officially like it because it distorts figures of how many residents a community actually has but as long as it is not being done to commit some kind of fraud then there is really no problem. Again, not exactly legal but done by millions. Where one could have problems is by having a fictitious address used fraudulently, for example, by people applying for social assistance but that is another subject.

But in my previous answers I brought up the fundamental factor that one cannot simply immigrate to Germany without the proper visa and residency permit. If one has these, then the problem of finding an address to register would seem to be a solvable one but yes, ne more factor that needs to be dealt with.

Theoretically, maybe there is an EU country with laxer regulations where one could register a vehicle without having residency? With EU plates, it could be driven around the EU. But even other EU vehicles have to have the emission sticker to drive in Germany. And an American would still only be allowed to stay up to 90 days in a 180 period lacking a more permanent residency or long term visa.
It was much different when I came to Europe in 1983. Americans were rarely scrutinized and these pre-Schengen days meant that one often had 3 to 6 months for a particular country and then could go on to the next. And in the 1980’s the Netherlands still allowed alien foreigners to have a vehicle registered there. Then the insurance companies started to disallow it but there was a bit shady insurance guy in Amsterdam that covered many American, Australian and other street performers and vendors who traveled around Europe. But the development of Schengen and further EU restrictions changed all of that. They don’t call it fortress Europe for nothing. For EU citizens and legal residents, things are more standardized and mostly with good consequences. For non-EU citizens it is much more complicated. Just traveling around Europe without restrictions are a thing of the past.

TominStuttgart wrote:

Otherwise, one will have to find an address where they can. Say if a friend lets them register in their apartment then they could officially be living there even if they actually sleep elsewhere. Again, it is getting into a gray area of legality but it is not meant that the state looks where or with whom one might be sleeping with. And as an example, many students or young workers might move out of their parent's home but stay registered there. Such people might move around a lot and it is easier this way. The government doesn't officially like it because it distorts figures of how many residents a community actually has but as long as it is not being done to commit some kind of fraud then there is really no problem. Again, not exactly legal but done by millions.

Sorry, but that is mostly a thing of the past.
The authorities have, over the years, gradually tightened the rules and sanctions:
You have to register at the residential address where you live - and the landlord has to sign that you actually do so. The fines for false statements are up to €50000, so the days where you easily find friends who let you register at their place are over.
Even students have been fined for still being registered at their parent's place instead of their university town.
You might possibly rent a room, register there and then let it stand empty while you live in a mobile home. That's pretty pointless, but about the only grey area left.
(Also, please note that the forum rules forbid discussions of illegal activities.)

beppi wrote:

TominStuttgart wrote:

Otherwise, one will have to find an address where they can. Say if a friend lets them register in their apartment then they could officially be living there even if they actually sleep elsewhere. Again, it is getting into a gray area of legality but it is not meant that the state looks where or with whom one might be sleeping with. And as an example, many students or young workers might move out of their parent's home but stay registered there. Such people might move around a lot and it is easier this way. The government doesn't officially like it because it distorts figures of how many residents a community actually has but as long as it is not being done to commit some kind of fraud then there is really no problem. Again, not exactly legal but done by millions.

Sorry, but that is mostly a thing of the past.
The authorities have, over the years, gradually tightened the rules and sanctions:
You have to register at the residential address where you live - and the landlord has to sign that you actually do so. The fines for false statements are up to €50000, so the days where you easily find friends who let you register at their place are over.
Even students have been fined for still being registered at their parent's place instead of their university town.
You might possibly rent a room, register there and then let it stand empty while you live in a mobile home. That's pretty pointless, but about the only grey area left.
(Also, please note that the forum rules forbid discussions of illegal activities.)

Sure one has to do it correctly. One cannot simply say they live somewhere. They need to have permission from the landlord or as a sub-renter from the main renter. A rental contract can be requested as proof and likely receipts for the rent for the first year. But this is exactly how millions are registered in Germany. A friend has a small extra room in their apartment; they rent it to you officially for 100 Euros a month and you register there. They would have to give in the rent money on their tax declaration but nothing illegal about this. But one is not controlled where they sleep. They could disappear for months at a time, or be off in their bus and still. Again, where it would be forbidden is if one was using it to do something otherwise illegal like claiming some kind of social assistance they aren’t really eligible for. Whether paying those 100 Euros a month rent as in the example is a worthwhile endeavor is a personal decision. I am not suggesting anything illegal. I doubt this plan to ship over a bus is practical if at all possible but I just gave a scenario of how the place of registration factor could possibly be dealt with if all of the other hurdles are overcome.

Or one leaves the bus/house in the states

Im sure you'll find some cozy places here in Germany..