PREPARE YOURSELF FOR STICKER SHOCK This column originally appeared on Wicked Local.

Gone are the days when I could get my inspection sticker at that special garage up in Everett where they would close the garage door behind you (always suspicious), put your car up on the lift, and rev up the engine until it passed the emissions test.  And we are way past the days of my dad’s 1973 Volkswagen bus (made famous in an earlier article) which once passed the state inspection without a horn.  When the mechanic told my dad to beep the broken horn, he just shouted, “beep,” and a sticker was placed on the front windshield. 

This year, the state of Massachusetts has implemented changes.  Each inspection station licensed to give stickers would now be forced to purchase roughly $7,000 of new equipment from Applus Technologies in order to meet the new state regulations including five cameras to film and record each inspection for the RMV, a handheld device, wireless testing equipment, a tablet for assisting staff, new printers, and a fraud prevention sticker dispenser.  Miraculously, the price for an inspection remains $35.00.  (Let’s see how long that lasts.) 

It is best, therefore, to plan ahead and be proactive which is what I tried to do, especially since I had done my own muffler repair during the summer courtesy of a couple of nuts and bolts I was lucky enough to find on my basement workbench and a $3.00 gasket which was a lot cheaper than the $350.00 repair job that I had been quoted.  My ability to get a sticker this year would be an endorsement of my work. 

I stopped at Sully’s in Scituate initially, the old stand-by for Scituate stickers, but he had a sign up during the first days of October sending people looking for stickers away due to the new machinery that was not operating correctly.  I actually stopped by Sully’s a few days in a row, hoping that the sign would be gone.  By the end of the first week of October, the gas station attendant out front recognized me leaving (again) and put his arms up as if to say, “I know.  It doesn’t make any damn sense.  I feel your pain.”  By Saturday morning, I headed to McGee Toyota.  I drive a Toyota truck, and figured that even with the new regulations in effect they would be hard pressed to fail one of their own.  To my surprise, the Toyota people told me that my best bet would be to go to the Shell station down the street.  According to them, they could only do three stickers per hour legally and were already backed up to the point where I would be waiting a significant amount of time.  I drove back to Sully’s.  He was now doing stickers, as there was a car already in the bay.  A ’58 Corvette pulled in behind me.  A man got out and asked if I was in line and I told him that I was.  Another man strolled out from inside the garage bay.  He laughed and told us his car had not passed because the computer had decided that his plate was unreadable.  The owner of the Corvette and I both laughed with surprise, collectively saying, “We can read your plate from way back here!”  “Didn’t matter,” said the man with the failed vehicle.  “They even took the plastic frame around the plate off and removed the license plate in order to take the picture, but the computer still said that it was unreadable.”   This is bull (expletive),” said the man standing by his Corvette.  “We should all storm the State House, line up 1,000 cars outside, all the way down the street in protest.  This stuff is just not necessary.”  Apparently, they now film the entire procedure, so gone are the days when they could cut simple corners or do a quick repair on the spot.  I then confessed to both men that my tiny parking light on the driver’s side front of my truck was out.  Although largely insignificant and something that any mechanic would overlook by inserting a quick bulb during inspections of past years, I was now concerned that it might not pass due to the inspection cameras.   Sadly, the man with the Corvette agreed.   “It probably won’t pass,” he said.  “They can’t just pop in a bulb anymore.  It will be filmed and photographed.  I’d put in it in myself if I were you.”  I took his advice, meaning I had to leave Sully’s for the fourth time in a week in an effort to get an inspection sticker.  I spent $1.39 on the way home and put in the light myself. 

By October 10, I was regretting not having had my inspection done in September to have avoided this process.  I stopped at McGee Toyota where I was told that “it was now even worse than it was the last time” I was there the Saturday before.  The attendant at McGee gave me his business card and told me to call to check on their sticker availability before wasting my time coming in. 

Finally, on October 11, I hit the jack-pot.  I pulled into Sully’s that Wednesday afternoon and noticed a truck from Shawn Harris Enterprises in the bay and two customers waiting.  Local legend Sully slowly worked through the process of inspecting each vehicle and had a short story of bureaucratic inspection-related turmoil for each sticker recipient while collecting the mandatory $35.00 fee and sending them on their way.  After Sully drove my truck into the bay, he came out and talked at length.  He claimed that the machine was on test number two on my truck and there would be about twenty before it was done.  “Been here since 1972,” said Sully.  Then he talked about the new system and how he has had to fail more cars than he has ever failed before due to the new regulations, and the people that he had been forced to turn away when the new machines failed to work the week before.   

My truck?  “It passed.  But save your paperwork.  These are two part stickers.  I don’t have any faith in ‘em at all,” said Sully with the weary old protective smile of an old neighborhood mechanic who has now seen it all.  And I was on my way. 

My advice?  Your best bet was to get your inspection done in September.