How to spot rot

Here's my officer story. We were ~20 miles from leaving Illinois with the new to us Airflyte. On an almost deserted 4 lane divided highway, going below the speed limit, when a police car pulls up next to us and gives us a good looking over. Then his lights came on and we pulled over.

"Know why I stopped you?"

"No sir"

"Expired registration"

Sure enough, the trailer registration expired at the end of December, it was now January. We explained the situation, we'd just bought it, we'd even had a police officer come to the house when we bought it, to do a VIN inspection, and he'd looked at the title, the VIN, the license plate.

Then he starts asking us more interesting questions. "You're from New Mexico?" "You came all the way here to buy this trailer?" "How old is it?" We asked him if he wanted to see inside. He started to realize he wasn't dealing with fully rational people. He was quite interested in the trailer.

He explained to us that there was an exemption in Illinois for an expired trailer registration, that you were allowed to tow it once, either to the MVD or to your home, to get it registered. We said "we're towing it home!" and he sent us on our way. I have no idea if that's a real exemption or not.