How long will you wait at the NC DMV? The agency now tells you on its website
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- DMV posts estimated wait times for all 115 driver’s license offices statewide.
- Expanded staff and online options cut system average wait from 2h 45m to 37m.
- Arrival check‑in and text alerts replace outdoor lines and update queue status.
People planning to go to a Division of Motor Vehicles driver’s license office can once again find out how long they might have to wait before they leave home.
The DMV website provides estimated wait times for each of the 115 driver’s license offices across the state. The website also indicates when an office has reached capacity and customers should “try another office.”
More than 85% of customers served at DMV offices are people who show up without an appointment. The goal of posting the wait times is to help people decide which office to try or whether to try another day, said Paul Tine, the DMV commissioner.
“Obviously you see the wait at one’s at three hours and one’s at 15 minutes, that’s going to help you out a lot to get to the right spot,” Tine said in an interview.
Expanded staffing at DMV offices and new options for online transactions have helped the DMV reduce average wait times across the system from about two hours and 45 minutes last summer to 37 minutes now, Tine said. The DMV tracks wait times from the point when a customer checks in with an employee and gets into a digital queue.
Those wait times can vary greatly from day to day and office to office.
For example, the DMV’s website showed the expected wait at the Hillsborough office was 100 to 120 minutes Thursday morning, compared to 60 to 80 minutes down the road in Carrboro. Customers in Clayton were waiting 140 to 160 minutes, according to the website, while the wait at the nearby Wendell office was 20 to 40 minutes.
The times are estimates that the DMV expects will get more accurate and precise as the agency determines how long various transactions take, Tine said. A customer renewing a license will move faster than one who needs a road test.
The DMV rolled out a similar system of publishing office wait times in 2023 but later took it down. Customers complained that the posted times didn’t include the wait in line outside the building before they got inside.
Now the DMV has largely eliminated those lines outside by having an employee check each customer in when they arrive. Customers immediately receive a text message with a link that tells them how many people are waiting ahead of them. They are then free to go sit in their car, take a walk or go to a store or coffee shop. When there’s a seat for them in the lobby, they receive a text telling them to return to the office and wait to be called.
Tine said Gov. Josh Stein pressed to have the DMV bring back the estimated wait times. Stein announced the feature Thursday at the official opening of a new driver’s license office in Belville, across the river from Wilmington in Brunswick County. He said customers who live near more than one office don’t know which one to try.
“You might get lucky and go to one with a shorter line, or you might have made a bad choice and ended up in one with a much longer line,” Stein said. “That in and off itself is frustrating. Well, no longer.”
Both Stein and Tine say the estimates are conservative.
“That’s a feature, not a bug,” Stein said. “We don’t want people getting there and it being longer than we thought it was going to be.”
You can see the average wait times by clicking on or hovering over the icon for each office on the DMV locator map at www.ncdot.gov/dmv/offices-services/locate-dmv-office/. The service is not available for the 127 license plate offices, which are operated by private contractors.
