License Plate News

[Big John]

What new states are getting plates this year ?

I think Mississippi is; not sure who else.

Mississippi is not a new state.

[Road Hog]

I for one am ready for a complete Arkansas makeover. The plate has basically been the same since 1978 with only a few tweaks. I thought the white Arkansas on a red background from the early 1990s was pretty sharp.

[jzn110]

Speaking of Michigan's license plates, would the people that get the Water Winter Wonderland plates put the registration sticker in the proper place on the plate? It's really not that hard. It goes in the lower right corner, not the upper right, not the lower left, not the upper left and not in the middle of the plate. I also see people that will put a new sticker in a different corner of the plate like they'll have a 24 sticker in one corner, a 23 sticker in another corner, a 22 sticker in another corner and a 21 sticker in yet another corner. Your suppose to cover your old stickers with the new ones. Yeah the god awful Pure Michigan plates have it in the upper right corner but the white line in the lower right corner of the Water Winter Wonderland plates is where the sticker is suppose to go on those plates. I just think it's stupid.

Michigan used to stamp an indent on their plates for where the sticker was supposed to go, but they stopped doing that once everything had standardized to top right.

Even though bottom right is historically accurate for the WWW plate, I'm not going to gripe about people putting it top right because it's been that way for well over a decade now (since the OG blue plates were retired).

[Flint1979]

Speaking of Michigan's license plates, would the people that get the Water Winter Wonderland plates put the registration sticker in the proper place on the plate? It's really not that hard. It goes in the lower right corner, not the upper right, not the lower left, not the upper left and not in the middle of the plate. I also see people that will put a new sticker in a different corner of the plate like they'll have a 24 sticker in one corner, a 23 sticker in another corner, a 22 sticker in another corner and a 21 sticker in yet another corner. Your suppose to cover your old stickers with the new ones. Yeah the god awful Pure Michigan plates have it in the upper right corner but the white line in the lower right corner of the Water Winter Wonderland plates is where the sticker is suppose to go on those plates. I just think it's stupid.

Michigan used to stamp an indent on their plates for where the sticker was supposed to go, but they stopped doing that once everything had standardized to top right.

Even though bottom right is historically accurate for the WWW plate, I'm not going to gripe about people putting it top right because it's been that way for well over a decade now (since the OG blue plates were retired).

Yeah I know the last one was on the white on blue plate. On the WWW plate there is a white line where the tab is supposed to go. Michigan also used to have the month on the lower left and year on the lower right. They should have never gone with the Pure Michigan plate, I got rid of that plate as soon as I could.

[ski-man]

Wyoming gets a new plate in 2025

[Road Hog]

The Arkansas Tourism site has a new logo, which I posted last year here but disappeared. It's made a comeback.

[Ted$8roadFan]

Florida will likely get a new base plate in 2025-26.

https://cbs12.com/news/local/legislature-could-take-up-first-change-to-basic-license-plate-since-2003-sunshine-state-oranges-license-plate-florida-november-16-2023

[DRMan]

Massachusetts is adding a Dr. Seuss license plate just in time for his 120th birthday.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dr-seuss-license-plate-campaign-hits-milestone-goal-just-a-day-before-the-author-s-birthday/ar-BB1jbWRO

[OCGuy81]

This might warrant a new thread, but where do you see states that are nearing the end of their sequences, like California, going next?

California (discussed here previously) will probably run out of available numbers in 2024.  I think they just reverse it, and start at AAA0001

Oregon.  They've still got a few years left with the current 123 ABC sequence, but after I see them maybe going to an ABC-1234.  It would last a state with their population a long time.

Texas.  I'm thinking they exhaust their ABC-1234 early next year, and flip it to 1234-ABC.

New Jersey.  Maybe a straight ABC-1234 once they exhaust their A01 AAA series?

[MATraveler128]

New Jersey.  Maybe a straight ABC-1234 once they exhaust their A01 AAA series?

New Jersey when they hit Z99 SZZ ended up skipping the T series and jumping straight to the U series. So instead of doing A10 TAA they ended up going to A10 UAA. Also Maine just finished the 1234 AB series before they're supposed to issue the new plates next year. So they've been issuing plates in the 100 JAA series on the existing chickadees. I think they should flip to ABC 1234 format. I believe New Jersey also used that format but scrapped it due to legibility issues.

[epzik8]

Florida will likely get a new base plate in 2025-26.

https://cbs12.com/news/local/legislature-could-take-up-first-change-to-basic-license-plate-since-2003-sunshine-state-oranges-license-plate-florida-november-16-2023

Unforgivable

[jdbx]

This might warrant a new thread, but where do you see states that are nearing the end of their sequences, like California, going next?

California (discussed here previously) will probably run out of available numbers in 2024.  I think they just reverse it, and start at AAA0001

I'd be willing to bet a pretty penny that when California rolls over, the first series that they crank out up in Folsom will be 001AAA1 - 999ZZZ1. 

[frankenroad]

This might warrant a new thread, but where do you see states that are nearing the end of their sequences, like California, going next?

California (discussed here previously) will probably run out of available numbers in 2024.  I think they just reverse it, and start at AAA0001

Oregon.  They've still got a few years left with the current 123 ABC sequence, but after I see them maybe going to an ABC-1234.  It would last a state with their population a long time.

Texas.  I'm thinking they exhaust their ABC-1234 early next year, and flip it to 1234-ABC.

New Jersey.  Maybe a straight ABC-1234 once they exhaust their A01 AAA series?

I wish California would just go to an ABC-1234 series.  Much more readable.

New Jersey did briefly have an ABC1234 series at one time, but they used the same font, and smushed all the characters together with no space or separator.  They were quickly discontinued because they were "too hard to read"

Nerd that I am, I actually made a spreadsheet to predict when states would run out of numbers in their current format.  I haven't updated it in a few years.  I'll have to dig it up and see what my prediction for California was.  I probably only did about 10-15 states, because each tab was unique based on various factors like what letters the state uses and whether they use leading 0s, as well as the pace at which they historically issue plates (based on the history of plate spotting found at www.licenseplates.cc).

[frankenroad]

Nerd that I am, I actually made a spreadsheet to predict when states would run out of numbers in their current format.  I haven't updated it in a few years.  I'll have to dig it up and see what my prediction for California was.  I probably only did about 10-15 states, because each tab was unique based on various factors like what letters the state uses and whether they use leading 0s, as well as the pace at which they historically issue plates (based on the history of plate spotting found at www.licenseplates.cc).

So, I dug up the spreadsheet, which was last updated in April, 2019.  I had California reaching 9ZZZ999 in August of 2023, so I was a little off.  I can assume that Covid had something to do with that but really have not looked closely at how the issuance of plates may have changed during that time.

[CtrlAltDel]

Nerd that I am, I actually made a spreadsheet to predict when states would run out of numbers in their current format.  I haven't updated it in a few years.  I'll have to dig it up and see what my prediction for California was.  I probably only did about 10-15 states, because each tab was unique based on various factors like what letters the state uses and whether they use leading 0s, as well as the pace at which they historically issue plates (based on the history of plate spotting found at www.licenseplates.cc).

So, I dug up the spreadsheet, which was last updated in April, 2019.  I had California reaching 9ZZZ999 in August of 2023, so I was a little off.  I can assume that Covid had something to do with that but really have not looked closely at how the issuance of plates may have changed during that time.

According to this:

http://www.licenseplateinfo.com/txchart/pass-tables.html

Texas has been giving out plates at a fairly even rate since 2012, even through the pandemic. So, that's one small bit of info there.

[GCrites]

Ohio did away with mandatory front plates almost four years ago. In every other one plate state I've been to all kinds of stores had a wide variety of novelty front plates out on the floor. In Ohio that is not the case even after all this time. Even auto parts stores have a very small selection if at all. It's mostly military-themed ones I've seen.

[Road Hog]

Texas has reached the V series in its AAA-#### format. Since the trend has been about one leading letter per 9 to 10 months, the entire format should run out by the spring of 2028. In the past they've just flip-flopped the numbers and letters and started over.

[CentralCAroadgeek]

I'm back from the dead to let y'all know that Arizona is holding a contest right now to decide on a design to replace its current National Guard license plate.



My license plate design is Option 33 in this poll, and you can vote as many times as you want this week! 

[Scott5114]

Damn, yours is far and away the best of the submissions, too. Good luck, I hope yours is chosen.

[CentralCAroadgeek]

Damn, yours is far and away the best of the submissions, too. Good luck, I hope yours is chosen.

Thank you so much! I really appreciate it

[jakeroot]

Voted in favour of yours, agreed that it's the best of the submissions. By a large margin, too.

[andrepoiy]

Ontario's license plate issuance has been a lot faster recently, and I suspect has a bit to do with Canada's overall increase in population of a million from 2023 to 2024.

We started D-series plates with DAAA back in September of 2023, and now we're at DCCZ in April 2024, going 3 letters in 7 months. (this is according to license plate spots on licenseplates.cc).

For comparison,
The C-series from CAAA to CCCZ took 10 months from July 2016 to May 2017.