What we do

Every working day, week, and year, we’re serving Washington residents. We provide information to law enforcement, license and regulate drivers, register vehicles and vessels, and license and regulate over 30 different professions. In addition, we ensure the fair and efficient collection of state revenue. For a quick look at what we do each year, see:

• Statistics-at-a-Glance: Calendar Year 2011
• Statistics-at-a-Glance: Fiscal Year 2011

Every working day, we:

• Issue about 950 original driver licenses and renew over 3,600 driver licenses.
• Renew the registration of nearly 24,000 vehicles.
• Process more than 2,100 original vehicle titles.
• Respond to over 2,200 phone calls and about 300 emails from customers about vehicle, driver, and professional licensing services.
• Process approximately 600 accident reports.

Every week, we:

• Sell nearly 60,000 driving records, and send about 330,000 notifications to customers regarding changes to monitored driving records.
• Issue about 2,400 enhanced driver licenses.
• Process nearly 30,000 license and registration renewals over the Internet.
• Record nearly 7,000 driver license suspensions, revocations, and reinstatements.
• Process over 40,000 traffic citations.
• Receive over 61,000 business and professional license status searches over the Internet.
• Receive nearly 1,800 Uniform Commercial Code filings, and support nearly 3,700 lender requests concerning secured transactions.

Every year, we:

• Collect an average of $2.65 billion in gross revenue.
• Issue approximately 6.5 million vehicle registration renewal notices.
• Process over 25,000 fuel tax returns, and collect about $1.25 billion in fuel tax revenue.
• Process about 10,000 International Registration Plan applications and collect over $48 million in Prorate fees and taxes.
• Manage about 262,000 professional licenses.
• Issue about 10,700 hardship licenses (ignition interlock licenses and occupational restricted licenses).
• Process nearly 550,000 sellers’ reports of sale, including over 350,000 through the Internet.
• Conduct over 450,000 driver knowledge tests and nearly 180,000 driving tests.
• Register about 275,000 vessels.
• Issue or update more than 50,000 vessel titles.
• Issue about 37,000 special license plates and about 5,500 personalized plates.
• Register nearly 4,000 complaints regarding professional licenses.
• Issue over 3,000 cosmetology operator licenses for cosmetologists, barbers, manicurists, and estheticians.
• Issue over 88,000 disabled parking placards.
• Renew nearly 36,000 disabled parking placards.
• Conduct nearly 19,000 driver hearings and interviews.
• Process about 80,000 insurance destroyed vehicle reports.