Maine Kei Truck Law: BMV Says No Change

Maine did the thing most states skip. It put a working group in a room for six weeks, handed it the research, and asked a fair question: do kei trucks belong on Maine roads? The answer came back unanimous, and it was no.

A correction. This post first ran under a headline about a bill called SP 884 that could reverse Maine's kei truck ban. That was wrong. SP 884 is an unrelated act on licensing online used car dealers, and no kei truck bill followed the working group. We rewrote the post around what actually happened. If you landed here from an old link, the short version is that Maine's rules did not change and nothing is pending to change them.

What the Maine Working Group Decided

LD 1209, passed in May 2025 as Resolves 2025, chapter 29, told the Bureau of Motor Vehicles to convene a working group on the safety and use of nonconforming vehicles on Maine's roads and highways. The BMV convened it on October 6, 2025. It met on the first and third Monday of each month through November 17, 2025.

The seven voting members were not a stacked deck in either direction. They included the BMV, the Maine State Police, an attorney, a city clerk, two local business operators, and the director of an auto auction and transportation museum. Nobody on that list is a natural enemy of old imported trucks, and nobody is a natural ally of rewriting registration law either. The group looked at two examples people ask about most: surplus military vehicles and Japanese mini trucks.

The result, in the final report filed in February 2026, was a flat no. The group "unanimously suggests no changes to current laws and standards regarding nonconforming vehicles," which the conclusion spells out as no carve out and no new inspection standards for registering them for road use. The report goes further and says the group "does not believe there is a way to effectively integrate nonconforming vehicles into Maine's roads and highways."

Why the BMV Said No

The report's case rests on a short list. Federal standards come first: kei trucks do not meet the FMVSS, EPA pollutant rules, or NHTSA crash testing, and the report calls them "dangerous to drive." Inspection comes next. Maine's inspection rules require equipment to meet standards set by the Chief of the State Police, so a normal inspection fails a kei truck by definition. Writing a separate standard would mean, in the group's words, suggesting ignoring the FMVSS. The report adds that the State Police lack the capacity to enforce over 800 pages of federal standards or to run modification checks at inspection stations.

The third reason is the slippery slope. A kei exception "opens a proverbial 'Pandora's Box,'" in the report's phrase, with pressure to extend it to ATVs and dune buggies. The fourth is right hand drive: the group leaned on a British Columbia study that found a greater than 40 percent higher crash risk for right hand drive vehicles.

Read that list with a skeptical eye. The inspection argument is the strongest, because Maine really does inspect to a federal standard and a kei truck cannot meet it. The crash evidence is the weakest. The report itself admits specific crash statistics are "difficult to obtain," and says fewer than 5 percent of the 31 states in an AAMVA survey had any crash data on mini trucks. The Georgia numbers it cites, 42 crashes and 14 deaths between January and June 2025, are for ATVs and multipurpose off highway vehicles, not kei trucks. You can accept the BMV's conclusion and still notice that its safety case leans on adjacent vehicles.

What Maine Law Says About a Kei Truck Today

Maine classifies a Japanese mini truck as an off road vehicle, which in the BMV's words "cannot be registered for use on the state's roads and highways." Off road vehicles may not run on Maine roads at all, with a narrow exception for trained government operators.

Importing one is a separate matter. Under the NHTSA 25 year import rule a kei truck that old can enter the country, and our guide to importing a kei truck from Japan walks through the process. The report has an answer for anyone who stops there: "the mere act of importing them does not mean they have the ability to be safely or legally operated on public roads."

The workarounds fail too. A plate from another state does not help, because the report says a vehicle registered elsewhere can run on Maine roads only if it resembles a Maine resident vehicle that would pass Maine's safety standards. Maine's low speed vehicle class needs a manufacturer's certificate of origin and a 35 mph posted road limit, and its antique class requires federal safety compliance for the year of manufacture. Our Maine state law page has the full rundown.

What Maine Owners Can Still Do

Own one and use it on your own ground. The report says these vehicles are "often found in places including but not limited to farms, campgrounds, theme parks, fairgrounds and other off highway locations," and that is where a Suzuki Carry or its cousins make sense in Maine: woodlots, hayfields, camp roads. A trailer covers the trip between properties. If you are weighing one against a side by side, our kei truck vs UTV comparison covers the tradeoffs.

If you are shopping, price the truck as private ground equipment. Buying one expecting a Maine plate is placing a bet the BMV just told you it will not take.

What Would Have to Change

A new bill, in a new Legislature. We found no kei truck bill in Maine's 2026 session, and none followed the report. Any change would need a fresh bill in the next Legislature that answers the three objections above: federal standards, inspection capacity, and the slope to other vehicle types.

Two states wrote that answer in 2026, and they did it differently. Vermont's Act 153, in force since July 1, folded kei vehicles into the existing pleasure car and farm truck categories. That is the same idea Maine's group considered and dropped as "too problematic to continue pursuing," and Vermont's legislature made the opposite call. Our Vermont coverage has the details. Alaska's SB 239 took the other route: any legally imported vehicle 25 years or older gets full registration with no FMVSS proof, and import paperwork becomes the gate. We cover how that is playing out at the DMV in our Alaska legalization guide.

If Maine owners want to move the needle, the organizing happens at Maine Kei and on r/keitruck. The pitch with a chance is the one that takes the BMV report seriously instead of ignoring it.

Bottom Line

Maine's BMV studied kei trucks, voted unanimously to change nothing, and no bill exists to change it. Kei trucks stay off Maine roads. You can own one and work it on private land. If you want a street legal kei truck in New England, Massachusetts registers them and Vermont has since July. New Hampshire restricts them. For the full Maine rules, start with our Maine state law page linked above.