Text 15050, 96 rader
Skriven 2005-10-22 14:42:00 av FRANK SCHEIDT (1:123/140)
     Kommentar till en text av ROY WITT
Ärende: License Plates
======================
-=> Quoting Roy Witt to Frank Scheidt <=-

 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.

 RW> I know, I still have a picture of my 1965 Malibu SS with number 268
 RW> 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.

 RW> 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.

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

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

That's a pretty complex situation ...

 RW> Now, in Texas, if you find an old set of plates that might have been
 RW> on or from the same era of an old car that you now own, you can buy a
 RW> set and have them transferred to that old car. Of course, these plates
 RW> go for a premium here.
 
In Illinois the plates stayed with the owner when the car was 
sold.  In Michigan, OTOH, the plates stay with the *car* when the 
car is sold.  That caused a peculiar situation when I moved from 
Illinois to Michigan.  I sold my car with Illinois plates and 
they stayed on the car so the buyer, a Michigan resident, was 
driving around for six months or so with *Illinois* plates.  I 
don't know what would have happened if he had violated some law 
and the license would have been spotted.  Fortunately nothing 
happened and the plates expired.

 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!

 RW> If you were cooling it, you probably didn't have a problem. 

The municipal cops here are very active ... [sigh] ...

 RW> I drive
 RW> cautiously, but aggresively and hadn't had a ticket for 20 years
 RW> before I got a stop sign violation in 1999. Then 5 years go by and I
 RW> get a speeding ticket in March of 2004.          

... Consider this to be a preemptive, counter-retaliatory strike.

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.20
--- Platinum Xpress/Win/WINServer v3.0pr5
 * Origin: Try Our Web Based QWK: DOCSPLACE.ORG (1:123/140)