Text 15034, 80 rader
Skriven 2005-10-21 21:18:41 av Roy Witt (1:1/22)
  Kommentar till text 15005 av FRANK SCHEIDT (1:123/140)
Ärende: License Plates
======================
21 Oct 05 09:17, FRANK SCHEIDT wrote to ROY WITT:

 FS> -=> Quoting Roy Witt to Björn Forsström <=-

 RW>>> Those states with less registered cars have the same setup as
 RW>>> yours, ABC 000 or 000 ABC. However states with a high number of
 RW>>> registered cars, have seven numbers or number/letter combos. In
 RW>>> California, they've gone to 1ABC000 and are now as high as 6ABC000.
 RW>>> In 1998, my Camaro was issued a 3ABC000, while my 1970 Firebird had
 RW>>> it's original plate 000 ABC on it, until I exchanged it for KB6PI,
 RW>>> many years ago.

 BF>> We are just up to Xxx xxx here by now and what's goint to happend
 BF>> when ZZZ 999 is reached I don't know since  Å Ä Ö isn't used.

 RW>> They'll probably do like California did when they reached that
 RW>> number. Switch it around, 000 AAA to 999 ZZZ.

 FS> Many years ago, in Illinois only numerals were used on plates, no
 FS> alphabetical characters.

I know, I still have a picture of my 1965 Malibu SS with number 268 515,
1965 plate on it.

 FS> There were well over one-million cars so the highest number would be
 FS> between 1 million and 2 million.

much later.

 FS> At that time one could order plates by mail and choose any number
 FS> one wished -- as long as it wasn't already claimed, of course.  A
 FS> buddy and I thought it would be cool to have a license number
 FS> which was the hardest to memorize if, for example, one were to
 FS> run a red light.  I don't recall the number we came up with but
 FS> it was higher than one million.  I sent the order in.

California still has plates on cars that were issued in 1963, the first
time they didn't renew a plate every year. These were black w/yellow
numbers and letters. Later, having run out of those plates (1m) in 1968,
they issued in reverse order of those black & yellow plates with yellow
letters on a blue background. When those ran out (2m), not very much after
that, they began to put a number before the now yellow letters on a blue
background, letters first, numerical next, but a 1 before the letters.
They continued that into the 6nnnlll and at the same time, issued white
background w/blue letters and specialty plates for the Olympics held in
LA. Today, if you happen to have one of those cars that would have had a
black/yellow plate or a blue/yellow plate, you can order them with the
nnnlll or lllnnn numbers on them, if they've been retired through salvage.

Oh, they also changed the law so that you could straighten out and repaint
a damaged black or blue plate. If you lost one, you were out of luck
though, as the remaining plate had to be replaced with a pair of the
current plates in use. As a result, many people began to run just the one
plate and held the other in reserve. I had a few spares in my file
cabinet, which I brought with me to Texas. Don't know why.

Now, in Texas, if you find an old set of plates that might have been on
or from the same era of an old car that you now own, you can buy a set and
have them transferred to that old car. Of course, these plates go for a
premium here.

 FS> What I hadn't known was that the state sent them out only when
 FS> all lower numbers had been used.  That is, before the license
 FS> number 1,000,000 would be sent out, 999,999 license plates
 FS> would have had to be issued.  This meant that *my* number
 FS> which was greater than one million would take a long time.
 FS> For two or three months before it arrived, my old license
 FS> had expired and I had no evidence I had sent in the
 FS> application so I had to drive very cautiously avoiding
 FS> the cops.  *Finally* it arrived!

If you were cooling it, you probably didn't have a problem. I drive
cautiously, but aggresively and hadn't had a ticket for 20 years before I
got a stop sign violation in 1999. Then 5 years go by and I get a speeding
ticket in March of 2004.


Roy
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 * Origin: Hacienda de Rio de Guadalupe * South * Texas, USA * (1:1/22)