Tex. Transportation Code § 501.156

This is the official text of Tex. Transportation Code § 501.156, part of Texas’s Transportation Code — governs vehicles, drivers, and roadways.

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§ 501.156. DUTY OF TRANSPORTERS TO DETERMINE RIGHT OF POSSESSION; OFFENSE.

Official statutory text

(a) The master or captain of a ship or airplane or a person who owns or controls the operation of a ship or airplane, in whole or part:

(1) may not take on board or allow to be taken on board the ship or airplane in this state for transport a motor vehicle without inquiring of the motor vehicle titles and registration division of the department as to the recorded ownership of the motor vehicle; and

(2) must make a reasonable inquiry as to the right of possession of a motor vehicle by the person delivering the vehicle for transport if the recorded owner of the vehicle is a person other than the person delivering the vehicle for transport.

(b) A person who violates this section commits an offense. An offense under this section is a misdemeanor punishable by a fine of not less than $50 or more than $500 for a first offense and, at the jury's discretion, not less than $100 or more than $1,000 for a subsequent offense.

Status: in_force · Read it on the official government site

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About this page: Statute text is reproduced from official government publishers via the Open US Law dataset (Vaquill AI, snapshot v2026.08, CC BY 4.0). Primary legislative text like this is public domain under the government-edicts doctrine (Georgia v. Public.Resource.Org, 2020). We link every section back to its official source so you can verify it independently.