Massachusetts license plate numbering
Paul Anderson
scheme
99A A99
(where 9 is a number and A is a letter) in favor of
999 AA9
I think I've also seen some plates with "9AA 999" but I'm not sure--they
were different, in any case from "999 AA9".
Can anyone in the know comment? I'm surprised they were out of the "99A
A99" series as it seemed they didn't make it all the way to the end
alphabetically or numerically.
Paul
mattki...@gmail.com
> It appears Massachusetts has discontinued the license plate numbering
> scheme
2000's all MA plates were in the form
999 AAA
Paul Anderson
> They have changed many times...up until the the very late 90's/early
> 2000's all MA plates were in the form
>
> 999 AAA
After that series, they went to "9999 AA" but used them up. That's
when they went to
"99A A99".
Paul
Martin O'Brien
My wife's plate (which she got with her first car in the mid 90s, is a
9999 AA series.
My plate, which I got in mid 2006, is 99A A99
-Martin O'B
Ed
Anderson <paulra...@charter.net> wrote:
> It appears Massachusetts has discontinued the license plate numbering
> scheme
>
> 99A A99
>
> (where 9 is a number and A is a letter) in favor of
>
> 999 AA9
>
> I think I've also seen some plates with "9AA 999" but I'm not sure--they
> were different, in any case from "999 AA9".
I bought a new car at the end of February and the new plate is of the
form 999 AA9.
Garrett Wollman
>Can anyone in the know comment? I'm surprised they were out of the "99A
>A99" series as it seemed they didn't make it all the way to the end
>alphabetically or numerically.
Massachusetts plate numbers also encode the month of registration.
Cars bought in October, November, and December all receive October
(999 AA0) plates, so those always run out first. Of course, the 0 and
the O are difficult to tell apart.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | The real tragedy of human existence is not that we are
wol...@csail.mit.edu| nasty by nature, but that a cruel structural asymmetry
Opinions not those | grants to rare events of meanness such power to shape
of MIT or CSAIL. | our history. - S.J. Gould, Ten Thousand Acts of Kindness
aic...@gmail.com
> Massachusetts plate numbers also encode the month of registration.
This is the key to understanding all of these changes. That is why we
see different series of plates in use at the same time. Plates of the
99A A99 series first ran out for the month of October (issued Nov-Jan)
in November '06. They then went to 999 AA0. Plates for all of the
other months remained until September '07 when the August ones ran out
followed by September and they also switched these over the the new
lettering system, albeit there were not too many of these issued. I've
started to see plates of the 999 AA0 series for March recently, but
the other months still have plates available for the old system.
To complicate things, in November of '07, they switched the October
plates from 999 AA0 to 9AA 990, because as someone mentioned, it was
hard to tell a 999 AA0 plate from and older 999 AAO for ticketing
purposes etc.
So, right now there are a couple of different series being issued. I
believe there are a good amount of June, July plates left, so those
will probably not run out until next year.
Mark Katz
<wol...@bimajority.org> wrote:
> Massachusetts plate numbers also encode the month of registration.
> Cars bought in October, November, and December all receive October
> (999 AA0) plates, so those always run out first. Of course, the 0 and
> the O are difficult to tell apart.
>
> -GAWollman
Can someone explain, in this day and age, why encoding the month of
registration into the plate number is at all useful to anyone?
Unless there is a good reason, then it must be the state using the KISC
principal (Keep it Stupidly Complex).
Paul Anderson
Regardless of the current series being issued, plates have always had
a mix of letters and numbers, so the confusion between 0 and O would
have always been there.
The number 1 has been changed from a "|" to a "1", but it could never
have been confused with the letter I anyway, because the I was always
"I", not "|".
Paul
John S
I've been wondering the same thing. There is no rational reason for tying a
plate number to a registration. It also rips a lot of people off. A friend
of mine brought a brand new car in Massachusetts in January and received a
plate that ended in 0. So off the bat he lost a few months of his new
registration, as there was no pro-rata. Everyone who registers a car in
November or December will lose at least a month or two off their
registration as well.
Whenever you notice that Massachusetts is doing something weird that no
other state (or almost no other state), it's not the rest of the country
that is goofy or torpid.
Hint: Stickers with year AND month!
aic...@gmail.com
>
> Can someone explain, in this day and age, why encoding the month of
> registration into the plate number is at all useful to anyone?
>
> Unless there is a good reason, then it must be the state using the KISC
> principal (Keep it Stupidly Complex).
I think it is just so police can take a quick look at a car and see if
the plates are expired or not.
aic...@gmail.com
> FWIW, I registered a car in December of 2005. I received a plate
> that had "9" as the last digit and was set to expire September
> 2007. I indeed pro-rated for the portion of the two-year
> registration that I was shorted. Then again, my insurance agent
> got me the plates. Maybe this is something that not all RMV
> employees know about, or that you have to ask for?
Registrations taken out in Nov/Dec (months for which there are no
plates) and also January use plates for other months and have the fee
pro-rated. It is always supposed to be this way. They usually issue
October plates for these months but they sometimes issue other months,
in this case September.
David Chesler
> Does Massachusetts really have the letter O on license plates?
> Regardless of the current series being issued, plates have always had
> a mix of letters and numbers, so the confusion between 0 and O would
> have always been there.
I never gave it much thought, but my plate. about a dozen years old,
is NNN-AAA, where the third N is a zero and the third A is a letter O.
Biker Geek wrote:
> Prior to 1968, all registrations expired at the end of December.
That's what the Registry says, but I recall a change over around 2000
-- am I recalling a similar change for inspections?
I never particularly noticed that the plates I was arbitrarily handed
were off by 10 from the prior and succeeding set.
Massachusetts is more hung up with plate numbers than any other place
I've lived. In New York every few years everyone got a new set of
plates with a new color scheme and new numbers -- how does the Tudor
family have a proprietary interest in Mass plate "1"?
We got a commemorative series plates a couple of years ago, and got
one of the numbers we'd requested. It ended in 3, but the series was
fully subscribed around September. The Registry agent came up with an
amount due that deducted the deposit we'd sent more than a year
before, included the special plate fee, and was pro-rated to represent
the less than 2 years. It also included credit for the remaining time
on the existing plates.
--
- David Chesler <che...@post.harvard.edu>
Free Cory Maye
aic...@gmail.com
> I never gave it much thought, but my plate. about a dozen years old,
> is NNN-AAA, where the third N is a zero and the third A is a letter O.
That'd be one of the "123-ABC" format plates. The difference between
"O" and "0" was never a concern because the police knew that the
numbering scheme was always the same. Letters and numbers always had
to be in certain positions as they had to follow the numbering format.
The confusion derived from the introduction of the "123 AB0" plates
introduced in 2006. I suspect that there were some issues with
transcribing tickets (i.e. handwritten ones being read incorrectly)
where mistakes were made and the wrong people got mailed tickets. So
the issue is not so much visual, it is more an issue on the clerical
end of things, which is why those plates were discontinued.
> That's what the Registry says, but I recall a change over around 2000
> -- am I recalling a similar change for inspections?
Yes, for stickers expiring in 2000, there was a date on the sticker, I
think either the 15th or 30th of each month, which was the expiration
date, as opposed to them just expiring at month's end. It was thought
that this would alleviate the backups at inspection stations at the
end of the month. But this was deemed too problematic and they
switched back after a year.
> I never particularly noticed that the plates I was arbitrarily handed
> were off by 10 from the prior and succeeding set.
Plates in Massachusetts are issued in kind of a haphazard manner. They
basically just pull out boxes of them out as needed and often the
numbers are not issued in sequence, if that is what you are referring
to.
David Chesler
> > I never gave it much thought, but my plate. about a dozen years old,
> > is NNN-AAA, where the third N is a zero and the third A is a letter O.
>
> That'd be one of the "123-ABC" format plates. The difference between
> "O" and "0" was never a concern because the police knew that the
> numbering scheme was always the same.
Out-of-state police might not be so certain, and even local police
and clerks might not know all the series now.
> Letters and numbers always had
> to be in certain positions as they had to follow the numbering format.
> The confusion derived from the introduction of the "123 AB0" plates
> introduced in 2006.
Exactly. Simple pattern matching doesn't tell an observer that my
plate is 120-ABo (using lower-case letter oh for emphasis) and not 120-
AB0 or 12o-AB0 or 12o-ABo.)
I suspect that there were some issues with
> transcribing tickets (i.e. handwritten ones being read incorrectly)
> where mistakes were made and the wrong people got mailed tickets. So
> the issue is not so much visual, it is more an issue on the clerical
> end of things, which is why those plates were discontinued.
That's a very fine distinction. I'm not sure a casual observer
writing down my plate can distinguish the zero from the letter oh
either; any more than the next transcriber can distinguish the two
glyphs the observer wrote.
>
> > That's what the Registry says, but I recall a change over around 2000
> > -- am I recalling a similar change for inspections?
>
> Yes, for stickers expiring in 2000, there was a date on the sticker, I
> think either the 15th or 30th of each month, which was the expiration
> date, as opposed to them just expiring at month's end. It was thought
> that this would alleviate the backups at inspection stations at the
> end of the month. But this was deemed too problematic and they
> switched back after a year.
My recollection is that prior to that changeover all annual or semi-
annual (whichever the case was) inspections happened for everyone in
the same month, and they used the last number to distribute the
expiration dates. I remember getting one last $15 inspection then
(was that just before new air standards, maybe the dyno test, raised
the cost to $29?) even though my prior inspection was still good for a
few months.
Inspections certainly float; for instance if you move your plates
from an old car to a new car at other than the end of the
registration, you have to get the new car inspected right away, and
that inspection will be good for a year. If you goof (that's my story
and I'm sticking to it) and don't get your inspection until early in
the next month after it expires, the new inspection will expire 13
months after that last one. Besides the one-month float on the $29,
if when you ultimately get rid of the car it's on a day after the
first inspection would have expired, but before its current inspection
expires, you've saved one inspection fee. (I don't think I've ever
had the same car inspected for 12 years continuously, so I've never
"lapped" the calendar.)
>
> > I never particularly noticed that the plates I was arbitrarily handed
> > were off by 10 from the prior and succeeding set.
>
> Plates in Massachusetts are issued in kind of a haphazard manner. They
> basically just pull out boxes of them out as needed and often the
> numbers are not issued in sequence, if that is what you are referring
> to.
If I get new plates in July the number will be something like 126-ABC
(or whatever the series is - it will end in 6 because you get between
11 and 12 months on the first registration). I'd expect the next set
of new plates in the box at that office to be 136-ABC, 146-ABC, etc.
They couldn't be 127-ABC, 128-ABC, etc. because the registrations
match the last digit. But I never particularly noticed. I think I've
noticed that they change the numbers more rapidly than the letters, so
the next sets are 126-ABD, 126-ABE.
Michael Moroney
>Plates in Massachusetts are issued in kind of a haphazard manner. They
>basically just pull out boxes of them out as needed and often the
>numbers are not issued in sequence, if that is what you are referring
>to.
Kind of haphazard? I got a green & white plate issued to me long after
the red & white plates came out. Around 1996 I think. It wasn't from the
end of the green letter plate series, either (the last green letter plates
had as their first letter either V or W. I forget which). Mine was K.
aic...@gmail.com
wrote:
That's pretty funny. They issued green letter plates sporadically
after their regular issuance ended in '93, but yours is a pretty
extreme case of this! They reached the last letter of the green
plates, V, in about 1991 and returned to the A series, re-issuing
numbers that had been turned in years earlier. They did this until '93
when the red plates came out full blast. I think K might actually have
been the last letter. They stopped making them, but there were still
a ton on hand, until around 1997 when they finally stopped. They were
issued to rental car companies, fleets, trucks mostly. Hell, there are
probably still boxes of them at the RMV they don't even know about as
organization is clearly not at the top of their list.
Paul Anderson
<1f3b2ad1-3c31-40d9...@w4g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
aic...@gmail.com wrote:
> The confusion derived from the introduction of the "123 AB0" plates
> introduced in 2006. I suspect that there were some issues with
> transcribing tickets (i.e. handwritten ones being read incorrectly)
> where mistakes were made and the wrong people got mailed tickets. So
> the issue is not so much visual, it is more an issue on the clerical
> end of things, which is why those plates were discontinued.
Did no one really think of this when they started the "999 AA9" series?
That the plates with a 0 in the last position would be confused with an
O? Really?
> Plates in Massachusetts are issued in kind of a haphazard manner.
> They basically just pull out boxes of them out as needed and often
> the numbers are not issued in sequence, if that is what you are
> referring to.
I wonder how they're done in New Hampshire, since you can get your
plates at your local town hall. They must be wildly out of numerical
sequence. We're smart up here--with no letters, it's not possible to
confuse O and 0, I and 1.
In article <fuigqt$vks$2...@pcls4.std.com>,
mor...@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney) wrote:
> I got a green & white plate issued to me long after the red & white
> plates came out. Around 1996 I think. It wasn't from the end of the
> green letter plate series, either (the last green letter plates had
> as their first letter either V or W. I forget which). Mine was K.
I recall the green-on-white plates were issued starting with Z, working
backwards to W. Or was that the last of the "9999 AA" red-on-white
series? I forget.
Then there's the start of the "9999 AA" series where the first plates
in the series were issued in the form "999-9AA" (the dash should be a
dot). There are also other plates I've seen with the characters spread
out like "9 9 A A 9 9" instead of "99A A99". Is this just sloppiness
on the part of the, er, manufacturer?
Paul
David Chesler
> I wonder how they're done in New Hampshire, since you can get your
> plates at your local town hall. They must be wildly out of numerical
> sequence. We're smart up here--with no letters, it's not possible to
> confuse O and 0, I and 1.
What's up with NH and all the vanity plates? I like how various non-
alphanumeric characters are available (like +, I forget what else I've
seen.)
This is getting into the territory of "NONE" or "N0NE" plates, but
could you get a vanity plate that looks like a NNN-AAA from other
states? ("It was my father's license plate number back in...") which
leaves room for merriment like Is and Os in a field of numbers or 1s
and 0s in a field of letters.
John S
Paul Anderson wrote:
> In article
> <1f3b2ad1-3c31-40d9...@w4g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
> aic...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> > The confusion derived from the introduction of the "123 AB0" plates
> > introduced in 2006. I suspect that there were some issues with
> > transcribing tickets (i.e. handwritten ones being read incorrectly)
> > where mistakes were made and the wrong people got mailed tickets. So
> > the issue is not so much visual, it is more an issue on the clerical
> > end of things, which is why those plates were discontinued.
>
> Did no one really think of this when they started the "999 AA9" series?
> That the plates with a 0 in the last position would be confused with an
> O? Really?
>
> > Plates in Massachusetts are issued in kind of a haphazard manner.
> > They basically just pull out boxes of them out as needed and often
> > the numbers are not issued in sequence, if that is what you are
> > referring to.
>
> I wonder how they're done in New Hampshire, since you can get your
> plates at your local town hall. They must be wildly out of numerical
> sequence. We're smart up here--with no letters, it's not possible to
> confuse O and 0, I and 1.
To be fair, that's easier to do when you don't have enough registered
vehicles to require using letters.
In today's world, a system that requires plates issued in sequence or with
a special last number doesn't make sense either. How many states base the
expiration month on the actual plate number?
aic...@gmail.com
> In article
> <1f3b2ad1-3c31-40d9-95af-c185915d5...@w4g2000prd.googlegroups.com>,
>
> Did no one really think of this when they started the "999 AA9" series?
> That the plates with a 0 in the last position would be confused with an
> O? Really?
I don't know for sure but I don't see any other explanation for
switching to a new series just for one month of plates after only
issuing the previous ones for one year.
>
> I recall the green-on-white plates were issued starting with Z, working
> backwards to W. Or was that the last of the "9999 AA" red-on-white
> series? I forget.
Red/white Spirit of America plates started in the "ZZZ" series and
worked back to W.
>
> Then there's the start of the "9999 AA" series where the first plates
> in the series were issued in the form "999-9AA" (the dash should be a
> dot).
Thet issued those in '95 and '96, but switched over because the 9999
AA ones were supposedly easier to read.
There are also other plates I've seen with the characters spread
> out like "9 9 A A 9 9" instead of "99A A99". Is this just sloppiness
> on the part of the, er, manufacturer?
I haven't seen any like that/
------------------------------
>This is getting into the territory of "NONE" or "N0NE" plates, but
>could you get a vanity plate that looks like a NNN-AAA from other
>states? ("It was my father's license plate number back in...") which
>leaves room for merriment like Is and Os in a field of numbers or 1s
>and 0s in a field of letters.
I suspect that you could, given how backwards the NH registry seems to
be.
> I wonder how they're done in New Hampshire, since you can get your
> plates at your local town hall. They must be wildly out of numerical
> sequence. We're smart up here--with no letters, it's not possible to
> confuse O and 0, I and 1.
NH used to issue plates in ABC-123 format but inexplicably changed to
all numbers in a six digit format, but those got eaten up so fast they
had to move to 7 digits. They could have just kept on the ABC-123
format and gotten a lot of years out of those because, as someone
said, there are not as many vehicles in NH.
Michael Moroney
>On Apr 21, 11:53 am, moro...@world.std.spaamtrap.com (Michael Moroney)
>wrote:
>>
>> Kind of haphazard? I got a green & white plate issued to me long after
>> the red & white plates came out. Around 1996 I think. It wasn't from the
>> end of the green letter plate series, either (the last green letter plates
>> had as their first letter either V or W. I forget which). Mine was K.
>That's pretty funny. They issued green letter plates sporadically
>after their regular issuance ended in '93, but yours is a pretty
>extreme case of this! They reached the last letter of the green
>plates, V, in about 1991 and returned to the A series, re-issuing
>numbers that had been turned in years earlier. They did this until '93
>when the red plates came out full blast. I think K might actually have
>been the last letter. They stopped making them, but there were still
>a ton on hand, until around 1997 when they finally stopped. They were
>issued to rental car companies, fleets, trucks mostly. Hell, there are
>probably still boxes of them at the RMV they don't even know about as
>organization is clearly not at the top of their list.
This was interesting, at least to me.
In case anyone is interested, I counted the colored edges of slightly
misaligned plate stickers on this plate, and if I didn't miss any, the
bottommost sticker should be an expires-in-98, meaning I got the plate in
96 or maybe 97.
Paul Anderson
<1093200e-f715-48e4...@c65g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>,
aic...@gmail.com wrote:
> NH used to issue plates in ABC-123 format but inexplicably changed to
> all numbers in a six digit format, but those got eaten up so fast
> they had to move to 7 digits. They could have just kept on the
> ABC-123 format and gotten a lot of years out of those because, as
> someone said, there are not as many vehicles in NH.
I like the all-number plates as I find them easier to read and remember.
They started when the
green-on-white-looks-like-Massachusetts-plates-except-for-the-live-free-o
r-die-motto-and-the-letters-are-a-little-bigger ones were discontinued
in 1999. Everybody got new plates with new numbers.
I thought that existing plate-holders got six digits (999 999) and then
new plates issued after that were seven digits (999 9999). Could be
wrong though, it's happened before, ask my wife.
And of course, 999 999 is different than 999 0999.
Paul
aic...@gmail.com
> I thought that existing plate-holders got six digits (999 999) and then
> new plates issued after that were seven digits (999 9999). Could be
> wrong though, it's happened before, ask my wife.
>
Prior to the ABC-123 plates, NH had issued six digit all-numeric
plates (123 456) and plate holders with these numbers had the option
of keeping their old number on the new plates. Leftover plates were
issued to general registrants and eventually they ran out (in early
2000 I believe).
Paul Schlichtman
combinations, it's time to start over. Blue plates, anyone?
Michael Moroney
>When you have red and green and all kinds of silly number-letter
>combinations, it's time to start over. Blue plates, anyone?
They've already used blue-on-white, before the green ones.
(can these still be valid? I don't think I've seen any for years and
years, so probably not)
Mass. probably should get into the 21st century and use something other
than a monotone background for "regular" car plates. Just about every
other state has a fancy background these days.
Kurt Hackenberg
Michael Moroney <mor...@world.std.spaamtrap.com> wrote:
>Mass. probably should get into the 21st century and use something other
>than a monotone background for "regular" car plates. Just about every
>other state has a fancy background these days.
I hope we don't. I like plates undecorated.
Marc Dashevsky
I like Delaware plates. They are as plain as can be.
--
Go to http://MarcDashevsky.com to send me e-mail.
maggie...@webtv.net
wrote:
> Paul Schlichtman <schlicht...@gmail.com> writes:
> >When you have red and green and all kinds of silly number-letter
> >combinations, it's time to start over. Blue plates, anyone?
>
> They've already used blue-on-white, before the green ones.
> (can these still be valid? I don't think I've seen any for years and
> years, so probably not)
>
The blue-on-whites and red-on-whites have long been obsolete, except
as "year of manufacture" antique plates (which I guess is true of any
obsolete plate design). Go to a classic car show and you may see a
few cars from the late '60s or early '70s with blue-on-white plates.
I don't think I've seen any with red-on-white plates.
Whereas the green-on-whites have remained valid even after the Spirit
of America plates came out, with no systematic attempt to replace them
as long as the owner maintains the registration, the blue-on-whites
and red-on-whites were phased out and completely taken out of
circulation after their successors were issued.
maggie...@webtv.net
wrote:
My wife and I bought a new car in February 1995, and got Spirit of
America plates. We traded in a car with green-on-white plates. The
dealer told us we needed to get a new registration because the old car
had my name on it only, and they wanted the new car registered in both
of our names, because we both signed for the car loan (it was financed
through the manufacturer). I liked the green-on-white plates better,
and was disappointed that I had to give mine up; it ticks me off a
little that the registry kept issuing them later than that, but we
just happened to get Spirit of America plates instead.
The next time we bought a new car after that, in 1999, it was to
replace a car that had been using my wife's old registration.
Although it was financed in both of our names, the dealer and bank
didn't seem to care whether it was registered in both of our names, so
we kept the same registration (in my wife's name only), and kept the
green-on-white plates. We still have that same car today, so the
issue hasn't come up again with that plate.
My younger brother's girlfriend has green-on-white plates on her car.
I believe that she was born in 1978, so it is unlikely that she got
the plates any earlier than 1994, probably not until even later than
that. When I first saw her car, I was surprised to see someone that
young have green-on-whites, thinking that they had been phased out
before she was likely to have put her first car on the road. If the
registry kept issuing them sporadically until 1996 or 1997, that makes
more sense.
aic...@gmail.com
> I believe that she was born in 1978, so it is unlikely that she got
> the plates any earlier than 1994, probably not until even later than
> that. When I first saw her car, I was surprised to see someone that
> young have green-on-whites, thinking that they had been phased out
> before she was likely to have put her first car on the road. If the
> registry kept issuing them sporadically until 1996 or 1997, that makes
> more sense.
Funny. I think what it comes down to is just employees pulling boxes
of plates out at random and issuing them, whether they're supposed to
or not. Another more recent case of this: a friend of mine was issued
a plate last year in the xxx H36 series, when they were already well
into xxx x76 by that point. So there was probably a big box of them
that had been skipped over a couple of years before.