It’s true, vehicle license plates are not required by law, per UCC 9-109, yet we recommend keeping the licensed plates and merely adding the Fee Schedule as an Addendum to the Driver’s License application. The Fee Schedule will lay out penalties for contracting the vehicle and can lead to large payouts; however, without a license plate, expect to have interactions with police in larger cities and especially when travelling to a new city or state.
The fees for a private vehicle with USDOT plates cannot be assessed until the surety holder for the municipal bonds have been notified in advance. That is why this alternative process is talked about, but not suggested in general. If one obtains USDOT plates then they will also need to rescind and return the DMV plates that were issued for the given vehicle upon registration. A vehicle cannot hold both DMV and USDOT plates at the same time, it must be one or the other. Multiple vehicles with the same owner can use the same USDOT Number, so long as the vehicles are all owned by a single trust or person.