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I was looking up license plate numbers last year, and I wondered just how heavy trailer plates can be. I knew of an L weight class trailer plate I had found in June 2018, but there was no evidence of trailer plates beyond the L weight class. While searching I went and searched plates all the way to the T weight class, and some plates had the same number used for different plate types. Of the plate types listed trailer was one of the plates listed.
Even though I had basically confirmed the existence of T weight class trailer plates, I never thought I would ever see a T weight class trailer plate, nor did I think I would ever hear about a single plate being found.
Yesterday, the day I started writing this aricle, I found an image of a T weight class trailer plate posted on a license plate collector group for Wisconsin license plates. It was numbered TR 310, and I was absolutely shocked at the find. First of all, I don't know how a person defines whether to register a trailer as a semi trailer or a trailer, so I already don't know what a trailer like that would look like.
Also, in other news, a 2024 sticker has been found in April, and it took me until now to find out that the sticker color has been known. And I was correct in the sense that 2024 stickers are black on white. I correctly guessed 2016 (I guessed red on white), 2021, 2022 (kind of, I guessed yellow but the sticker was tan), and 2024 sticker colors. I guessed 2016 stickers based on a 7 year cycle that I was seeing with sticker colors, I guessed 2021 stickers with a pattern of boat stickers being close to passenger stickers for 2018, 2019, and 2020, I guessed 2022 stickers based on a wrong sticker color saying that 2021 stickers were black on white, and I saw a pattern in insert stickers with all stickers alternating between yellow and white a lot. I guessed 2024 stickers by process of elimination because white had not been used in such a long time.
However, that doesn't mean I'm good at guessing sticker colors. I guessed the 2015 and 2020 sticker color to be black on green, then pushed my black on green prediction to 2017. I guessed 2019 stickers to be black on red.
I have no clue what stickers beyond 2024 will be. I have to wait until 2023 to find any new sticker colors beyond insert stickers.
I got a lot of license plates for Christmas. Some of the most notable plates include a March 2017 apportioned plate, 1957 heavy farm, 1981 ZA trailer, September 1993 Heavy Truck with a restricted use sticker, 1992 Heavy Truck in the PA series, and a lot of 4 Heavy Truck tabs, supposedly from 1951-1961.
My sister bought me a New Mexico chili pepper capital license plate, which is ironic because I ended up buying her the exact same license plate product on eBay a few days after she bought the plate for me.
I am so far behind on license plate stuff. I tried to crop over 1,000 images, and I realized I had to start over. Not fun.
I also bought a bunch of license plates from a license plate collector that my dad happened to know. In the lot was a 1934 truck plate, 2005 special-Z plate, and some Heavy Truck plates from 1969, 1973, and 1977, which are in my Heavy Truck section of the website, with the credit saying "Chris".
I'm also taking the time to archive links to old eBay images before they get deleted. Something I hate doing. I also archiving the pages of the search results in case the images are eventually deleted (though the images have lasted at least a week longer than the pages themselves.) If you want to see some old license plates you might not have found on Worthpoint, then click on the Plate Links section of this website.
A few years ago, I wanted to go to a junkyard. I thought I would be able to get some license plates, and unfortunately I found out I would have to be 18 to go to junkyards.
I turned 18 3 weeks ago. And the weekend of my birthday, I went to the C. L. Chase junkyard in Camp Douglas.
When I went to the junkyard, we were lost. We didn't know where the junkyard was. So we had to call the place to come show us where to go.
I sat. And sat. AND SAT. For half an hour, I did nothing while my sister and mom were at Walmart getting toys during black Friday month (stupidest idea ever. It's a stupid idea to have black Friday when people are trying to grocery shop. If they really cared to stop COVID-19 they would do cyber Monday online only).
Once the owner of the junkyard finally came, they brought me to the beginning of the junkyard, which had some plates ranging from 1977 to 2001. I went looking for many license plates, and then was told to leave because the owner had business.
Really? You are going to waste a half hour of my time when we were in the dang town and then kick me out half an hour later before I even purchased a single license plate? You are going to charge me $6 per license plate then ask me to leave before I can waste my money on a crappy license plate?
There are a lot of license plates there I want. I don't think I'm going to get license plates from there, because the plates will be too expensive and the owner will have no time to let me waste my money on crappy license plates.
And I understand they may be busy. But they could have told me that they were busy and find a time they weren't busy instead of having me waste an hour of my life for nothing.
I went to the antique shop in Tomah because the junkyard was such a letdown. I got a red farm plate with the red Wisconsin (which is the current low at around 140700F and I'm suspecting that the red plates may have started at 140001F), a 2003 Heavy Truck license plate, a pair of 2011 Heavy Truck license plates, some truck plates, and one of the last 23,000 wide die license plates made, with the reflective serial (which most wide die license plate serials were nonreflective).
On Friday, I went to another junkyard, which is called L&M Salvage, near Richland Center, Wisconsin. When I got there, it was a pretty large junkyard. We went to the office, and they pointed me out to the junkyard.
Unfortunately, the ground was very muddy. So muddy that my shoes kept getting stuck in the mud.
The first license plate I found was a 2012 Iowa license plate with the blue dies. My dad asked me to get it because it came from Dubuque (which my dad likes Dubuque). The first license plate I picked for my collection was a pair of 2018 truck license plates in very good condition. One thing I was excited to learn was what the sheeting was, because the plate was in the MX series, and the latest 3M plate I knew about was from the MA series and the earliest Avery plate I knew about was from the PA series. I had been suspecting plates from the NC series to be Avery sheeting but I couldn't see the hologram (and people don't like people staring at their license plates from an inch away to find out what the sheeting is. I haven't stuck my face into license plates for about 7 years now but I don't think someone would say "sure go look at my license plate" if I asked them to try to find out what the sheeting was). The plate was on a crushed truck on the bottom of a pile of crushed vehicles.
I kept walking, then found a mystery license plate. I went to cross the ditch, but unfortunately I didn't notice that there was a whole pocket of mud under the tall grass, so both me and my dad had soaking wet shoes with who-knows-what kind of mud soaked into our shoes. The plate was a 1988 farm plate with a remnant of a 1989 sticker.
I walked up to many cars and trucks, and eventually came across a car with its trunk flipped up. I pulled the trunk down, and found a 2019 license plate on it. The month sticker was above the year sticker at the right, and I was in need of a 2019 plate after my November 2019 sticker fell apart and my July 2019 sticker was ruined by Sculpey clay (beware of polymer clay near license plates). Strangely, there was three screws holding the plate on (which was strange)
I spent a lot of time in the trucks section of the junkyard, because I focus on collecting non-passenger license plates.
Of the most notable plates I got was a farm plate from the first 10,000 plates issued in the series, a 2017 truck plate, a truck plate in the MM series that was ziptied to the truck (it has 3M sheeting), and a crumpled up 2003 truck plate. My dad was also walking around and he took some license plates off of trucks. He brought back a 2010 farm plate and a 2018 farm plate (which has a sticker that somehow is in slightly better condition than my 2018 farm plate sticker).
We walked some more, and I came across a plate with a 1988 dual purpose farm plate. I did not have a dual purpose farm plate from 1988, so I tried taking the plate off. It was a borderless dual purpose farm plate from around AZ 5000, and the screws were tiny with a plastic border around them. I couldn't get the screws to turn, so I tried feeling in the back to see if there was any nuts behind the license plate holes, and sure enough, there was two nuts. I took the nuts off and I took the plate off of the truck. The other license plate was from 2003 and I also picked that plate off the truck.
I found a 2009 Heavy Truck plate from the E weight class, and I picked that up even though my dad was telling me we had to go. I couldn't find the other part of the pair sadly, and I'm thinking that Chris, who told me about the junkyard and went there and picked up 63 license plates a year ago, probably took it. I also picked up a 3M truck plate from the DL series, which I would expect to be an Avery plate.
As I was taking my license plates off the scale, I found a pair of 2019 motor home plates just sitting in a pile of stuff. I picked them up and asked how much for the plates. They asked for 50 cents, which was a good deal. All in all I paid $4 for 24 license plates.
Way back in 7th grade, my class was assigned a "Genius Hour" project where we come up with an idea and bring it to live. I did not have very many ideas, until someone in my class suggested I write a book on license plates. I liked the idea, and did a license plate book for my project.
It was more of a picture collection than a book. Many states didn't have text of any kind, it was just images of license plates and their stickers.
I worked on the project on and off until September 27th, 2018, just a couple weeks before I created my website.
I had color tables in my Wisconsin book (I split off the book into individual states/territories/countries because lag), and I looked over them and saw some colors that I did not have on my website.
I've added the old sticker colors to my color tables, listed as "old memory" because I really don't know if the colors are correct or not. Then again, I got September 2012 sticker colors correct from 2012.
I was also looking at my color tables for insert stickers. I noticed that the palette for colors followed a delayed cycle of passenger stickers. September 2016 was red, September 2017 was tan, September 2018 was white, September 2019 was yellow, September 2020 was orange, and it appears that September 2021 might be green. June 2017 was red, June 2018 was tan, June 2019 was white, June 2020 was yellow, June 2021 might be red. March 2018 was red, March 2019 was tan, March 2020 was white, March 2021 was yellow. See a pattern? September stickers use the sticker color of the passenger sticker 2 years ago, June stickers use the sticker color of the passenger sticker 3 years ago, and March stickers use the sticker color of the passenger sticker 4 years ago.
That was a really lazy and bad idea on Wisconsin's part. September 2017 stickers were tan while December 2017 stickers were yellow.
I'm going to update the sticker color predictions.
I went to report a new high for bus license plates, which I saw yesterday on a brand-new school bus, at licenseplates.cc. The bus plate was numbered 27754B, and the plate was so new that there wasn't even an inspection sticker on it.
I then started looking at the numbers because that is what I do when I go to that website. I noticed something shocking. Someone had reported that there is farm license plate numbers all the way up to 367744F! The highest number I had spotted in August was 352078F, which was also right aligned, and this number took me by surprise. Why would it take months to reach another thousand license plates, then issue 15,000 license plates in a month? Why is the number gap so big, instead of the number gap being something I expected? The highest expected number for farm plates right now is no more than 355000F, and that is the highest I can even generously estimate. I estimate the plate numbers are hovering around 352750F.
But that wasn't all. There was a lot of numbers that were much higher than I would expect. The disabled plates were apparently at 63536DS, when I reported that a plate around 56000DS was sent straight from the DMV to Cody James Corbett, another license plate collector, in August. The semi trailer plates are allegedly at 802744 right now, which is above the current expected ranges. I would expect the series of semi trailer plates to be around 790000, not all the way into 800000.
Some ranges they provided were reasonable. They reported C13096 when I've known about C13635 or something like that since spring. They reported 144 RL when I saw the same license plate. They also reported K7926 when I remember a K8076 plate but I don't know if I messed up the serial number or not.
One plate that made me think was WRF-103.
If you are a Wisconsin license plate researcher like me, you would know that the series stopped at WRE. There is no reason why a WRF plate should be issued at all. If they are not lying, it is nearly guaranteed it was a license plate that was never used because the plate would have been issued alongside the black license plates.
Whoever Ben is, I have a feeling they may work at the DMV...
UPDATE: I looked at some serial range history and they reported a truck plate at SO1144, when Wisconsin doesn't even have an O die. Someone named Nate overrode that number with a real license plate number, SN3485. I'm very suspicious of Ben now. I reported a real farm license plate number that I saw in August, and I looked the plate number they reported up on the DOT plate search tool and it came up with "plate not found" which means that the license plate is so far out of the current ranges that they didn't even add the plate to the system as "not issued yet but will be issued soon."
UPDATE 2: I looked at Wikipedia's edits on their serial ranges they report, and this person kept updating the farm plates with higher and higher numbers, the first being from around 358000F then all the way up to that 367000F plate then a 368000F plate. I don't know if the DMV is just very far behind, someone works at the DMV, or if people are seeing wrong, or the people are just straight up lying.
Wisconsin insert license plates are notable for using one of the strangest sticker types in license plate history. Insert stickers.
Wisconsin is not unique for using a sticker color for each quarter. Delaware and Ontario either used or currently use quarterly sticker colors.
The first insert stickers were vertical, long strips of reflective sheeting that took up the entire height of the numbers. The format was:
4
P
Between 1965 and 1967, insert stickers got slightly narrower. Stickers after 1967 use a strange format like:
3 7
P 4
From 1978 to 1979 stickers used a more readable format. Since 1978 insert stickers have been square stickers of half the size of the stickers of the early 70s. The format was a large number to the left, a letter code in the top right and the year in the bottom right.
From 1980 to 1983 stickers used a varying format. The format was a large number to the left and a year with a state identifier and the "WIS" in some random order to the right.
From 1984 to 1991 stickers would either have a vertical month to one side and the other side would consist of a state identifier and a year, or they would have a horizontal month on either the top or bottom and a year with a state identifier on the other side.
From 1992 onward, the format has been a month on the top or bottom and a year with a state identifier on the other side.
Monthly stickers have been issued since at least 1966. In 1966 they were a vertical month and a vertical year:
A 6
P
R 6
From at least 1968 to 1977 monthly stickers were a huge month number/letter and a tiny month code and year
From 1987 to 1991 montly stickers used the same codes that were used on older stickers but respected the color cycles of the quarter. They were a large month identifier with a year and state identifier on the other side.
From 1992 onward montly stickers were the same as insert stickers.
From 1963 from 1979 stickers used letter codes to identify what kind of entity owned the vehicle. The same goes for insert tabs, where C or K meant contractor and P or Z meant Private.
| Letter | Meaning |
|---|---|
| C | Contractor |
| CX | Contractor Reduced Fee |
| P | Private |
| PX | Private Reduced Fe |
| R | Rental |
| T | Tax Only |
| X | Reduced fee? |
| XT | Dairy Truck |
I'm far behind in my website, mostly because I continue to fall behind in school. I'm getting caught up in some classes and I continue to fall behind in others. Online learning is ineffective for me, as I lack motivation and my internet is too slow to handle 2 video calls, Kahoot, and assignments at the same time.
This website was created on October 10, 2018, as part of a school project. I had to copy and paste all the code from my old website to my new website, and while most of the old code has been cleaned up there are old pages that still use my old coding technique.
At first my general technique for coding was similar to what I do today:
<p>Wisconsin started issuing license plates in 1905.</p> <table> <tr style="background-color:#000000; color:#e4e4e4;"> <th>1905-1911</th> <th>1-W<hr></th> </tr> </table>
The main characteristic is that single elements, like <p> and <img>, would always close on the same line, while nested elements, like <table> would have their own separate line for starting and ending tags.
After that, I learned about the importance of whitespace. Me being me I overdid the whitespace to the point that I could not scroll through my trucks page while coding it:
<p>
In 1930, truck plates switched to a July-June cycle, and
they also were significantly different than passenger plates.
While passenger plates dropped weight class codes in 1932,
truck plates kept them. They still use weight classes for all
trucks. And unlike passenger plates, these plates used "WIS"
until 1967.
</p>
<table>
<tr style="background-color:#fffa67; color:#cc0000;">
<th>
30 31
</th>
<th>
A 1
<hr>
</th>
<th>
B 1
<hr>
</th>
<th>
C 1
<hr>
</th>
<th>
D 1
<hr>
</th>
</tr>
Not that long after, I started condensing the tables, while I left the paragraph elements alone. I also added whitespace between the table rows because it made the tables easier to see when coding:
<p>
In 1930, truck plates switched to a July-June cycle, and
they also were significantly different than passenger plates.
While passenger plates dropped weight class codes in 1932,
truck plates kept them. They still use weight classes for all
trucks. And unlike passenger plates, these plates used "WIS"
until 1967.
</p>
<table>
<tr style="background-color:#fffa67; color:#cc0000;">
<th>30 31</th>
<th>A 1<hr></th>
<th>B 1<hr></th>
<th>C 1<hr></th>
<th>D 1<hr></th>
</tr>
<tr>
After I moved my website I stopped doing that method because it was annoying and unnecessary to have single elements on a minimum of 3 lines. Unfortunately, even to this day there are still a few areas where I haven't fixed the code to be on one single line, such as some footer areas.
After that, around 2019 I started a new method of coding, where if the element was minor enough it would be put on a single line, such as single row tables, while more major elements, such as large tables, would be put onto multiple lines.
<h1>Disabled Veteran Truck</h1><hr>
<p>Disabled Veteran Truck plates, while
similar in name to Disabled Truck plates, their color cycles
tend to be bizarre and don't really line up with any plate
type. Between 1981 and 1987 they followed Truck plate cycles,
then in 1990 a base was issued that was the same as Light
Truck For Hire plates.</p>
<table>
<tr style="background-color: #ffff00; color: #cc0000;">
<th>90</th>
<th>9001</th></tr></table> Unfortunately, that method breaks the tab alignment of my HTML, and it looks uneven and ugly, so I stopped doing that coding.
My current coding rules are as follows:
I've also used five distinct navigation bar styles, and I recently tried to have the individual plate types only pop up after the user of this site clicks on a dropdown.
The first navigation bar was a basic HTML navigation bar, and it was basically just a link from the home page to the trucks page:
(in case you were wondering, the links take you to the pages.)
The second navigation bar I discovered today after seeing a comment on the old navigation bar. I completely forgot about this navigation bar, and even as I am writing this right now I don't know what this navigation bar looks like.
This was an unreleased navigation bar test. It was a navigation bar test from around October 2018.
The third navigation bar was the one that was used on my old website. It followed the cyan theme better than the old navigation bars, and it was less bulky.
The fourth navigation bar was the main navigation bar that is still used on some pages I abandoned (like this). It was almost identical to the last navigation bar, but the links weren't underlined.
The fifth navigation bar is the current navigation bar, with the large button style. The current navigation bar has been used since February 2019, though some of the pages didn't get the new navigation bar until September 2020.
There is another navigation bar that was used for the start of my new website in August. I had gotten bored over the summer, so I decided to just start over with my website because the code was so bad. I didn't like the curren color scheme so I reversed the color scheme because it looked nice. This is what the navigation bar looked like:
I abandoned the project because I didn't have the motivation to create a whole new website from scratch when the old website was still usable.
Back when the website was first created, I was actually planning on creating a branch of my website devoted to Minnesota, llinois, and New York license plates. I abandoned the pages very quickly after creating them. I knew nothing about the plates, and I was focusing more on my Wisconsin section. The pages still exist, and if you care enough to see them they are in my old navigation bars that are above this text.
My website in general has been influenced by my life at the time. When I first created this website in 2018, I was actively collecting Wisconsin, New York, Illinois, and Minnesota license plates. I still collected out of state license plates, and up until at least January 1, 2019, I was still collecting out of state license plates.
Around 2019 I stopped collecting out of state license plates to focus on Wisconsin license plates. I still have my old collections and in January 2020 I dropped a lot of money on Minnesota license plates because they were cheap and I wasn't finding many Wisconsin license plates.
Cranfest 2019 marked a major turning point in my collecting focus. Before that my focus was all Wisconsin license plates, and after that, because I found a whole bunch of Heavy Truck license plates that I couldn't afford and could only take home 2 license plates, I had a big interest in insert license plates.
My focus shifted on October 11, 2020 from collecting insert license plates in general to collecting specific plates with insert stickers I don't have yet.
The collectors at the meet were talking about their "almost impossible runs" and how nearly every collector had one of those runs. After that I decided to make my "almost impossible run" to be collecting one of every single insert sticker that would ever exist, which includes every letter code from every quarter AND monthly stickers.
I know about monthly stickers since at least 1966, and I know of C, CX, P, PX, R, T, X, XT sticker types from 1963 to 1979, and after that since at least 1987 there have been monthly stickers. From what I know, if I wanted just one of every sticker color, there are 12 sticker colors from 1963-1965, 60 sticker colors from 1966-1977, and 176 sticker colors from 1978-2021, for a total of 248 sticker colors to collect right now, and if I wanted 1 of every type of sticker, there are 8 types of stickers for 4 quarters of stickers, so there are 32 sticker types for just quarterly stickers from 1963 to 1979 for each year, 44 sticker types from 1966-1977 for each year, at least 32 sticker types for 1978-1979 for each year, at least 4 sticker types for 1980-1986 for each year, 12 sticker types for 1987-2021 for each year, and also typeless stickers that apparently exist for 1978 and 1979. Add all that up together and there are 96 sticker types for 1963-1965, 528 sticker types for 1966-1977, at least 66 sticker types for 1978-1979, at least 28 sticker types for 1980-1986, and 420 sticker types for 1987-2021. That makes for a grand total of: at least 1,138 sticker types to collect. Taking into account possibilities of montly stickers from 1963-1965 and 1978-1986, there are 748 sticker types for 1963-1979 and 504 sticker types for 1980-2021, so there is a potential of 1,252 sticker types for me to collect. That is nearly twice the amount of license plates I have.
When I went to the license plate meet, I got this September 2017 Heavy Truck plate:
I know that December 2017 insert stickers were yellow. If you don't know already, yellow and gold stickers are so hard to tell apart that I've confused them multiple times. I confused the tan 2022 stickers for yellow stickers, and I assumed a June 2018 sticker for 2 years was yellow.
At this point, I don't think any thought is put into insert sticker color cycles. They might as well have a chicken pick the sticker colors, because at this point a chicken would do a better job picking sticker colors.
I heard a story that a pink plate was proposed where they design license plates, and they thought it was a dumb idea. So that's why there are so many 1990 pink backed apportioned plates.
I wonder how those same people would feel knowing that two confusable sticker colors were used two quarters in a row. Then again, they did the same thing in 1996 with December 1995 and December 1996 stickers, and for a while I didn't know the difference between the two stickers.
I went to my first license plate (mini) meet yesterday.
We had to leave at 9AM because the meet started very early in the morning. I had asked to use my birthday money that day because I was broke, much like my first Cranfest. I simply didn't know about this meet even being possible, and I didn't know the mini meets even existed until September.
We tried finding out where this meet was. The meet was at this street called Fern Dr. I saw Fern Ln, thinking they may have gotten the wrong street name. My dad said that was the wrong street. I was confused. Then I saw Fern Ave. Then Fawn Ave.
We had to pull up a GPS just to find out where Fern Dr. was. It was off of Fern Ln.
That was probably the dumbest street naming system.
The first thing I noticed was that it was cold outside. I looked around and saw some vehicles and some tables with license plates on them. I expected that, and looked for Heavy Truck license plates immediately.
I was shocked when I found 1985, 1987, and September 2018 Heavy Truck license plates, all for a combined price of $15.
I went looking some more, and I picked up a 1987 motor home license plate. I asked who had the plate, and I was told that they were talking with my dad. Apparently my dad knew this person from work 30 years ago. If that coincidence wasn't enough they were the first person to send me a friend request on Facebook.
I told my dad to hold on to it, and then I found a lot of boxfuls of license plates. Most were passenger plates or out-of-state plates, but there was a lot of bad condition Heavy Truck license plates for a total price of $15. They also were offering me some cool license plates I wanted, like a monthly tractor plate and the 52nd Heavy Truck plate issued in the base. I unfortunately spent all my money before I could get the plates.
I went looking some more and found some more crappy Heavy Truck plates. Among the worst of the plates was a 1990 Heavy Truck license plate I had seen on Facebook. The plate was completely folded up like someone tried origami with it at first. I found it somewhat unbent, but still crumpled up. It was a dollar like every other plate in the box, so I couldn't leave it behind.
I found some more plates at this other table, and one plate that caught my attention was a 2006 trailer plate, made on an Avery light truck for hire base. The person who had the plate apparently didn't notice that, and he said that it was another reason why it was a good deal.
I ended up getting 24 plates for $60. That is the same amount of plates I get at Cranfest, but for half the price.
I've been ripped off on eBay too many times. Plates that were marked $3 I bought for $10.
I also took lots of pictures of plates I didn't buy. I also learned about some interesting license plates that I'm going to have to add to this website, like private lessor, not for hire lessor, semi topper plate...
We went to my grandma's house after that. We didn't know if they were home, but we went anyway to see if they were home. I took a group picture of my plates on the porch and posted it to Facebook.
Even my sister enjoyed the meet. She ended up getting 2 bicycle plates and a 1983 Germany plate for free, and I got her a 2011 truck plate because it was a 2011 plate.
When I got home, I grabbed a screwdriver and started attempting to unbend the 1990 Heavy Truck plate. I was able to get most of the plate unbent, and now the plate looks like it was run over by a car rather than thrown like a frisbee, hammered, and run over by a tank.
I went on Facebook today and decided to start downloading some license plate photos for reference (and maybe for my website if they allow it). I went to the Wisconsin license plate group on Facebook, clicked on the profile I was looking for, and looked through the entire list of photos back to October 2019 or so. I downloaded photos I didn't already have downloaded. I then stumbled upon nothing but albums full of license plate images. Each album took too long for me to download, and at times I felt like I was going to get carpel tunnel from how much I was downloading.
I then ended up accidentally backing out after that, and at that point I thought I had enough photos for now. I checked the folder that my images were downloaded in, and the amount of photos that was shown was 14... The other digits were cut off, and I only saw that when there was more than 999 photos. I thought it was impossible I just downloaded 1400 photos, but sure enough, I go into my files app and get the folder info and it says there are over 1400 files in the folder.
Yeah, I have way too much work to do. Don't expect any updates to the serial ranges for a few weeks.
I noticed that it was sunny out today. I had taken my whole license plate collection down so I could take pictures of them yesterday, but by then it was too late in the day so I had to pack it up. I decided that during my 49 minute long lunch break (don't ask me why my school doesn't just call it a 50 minute or an hour lunch break) I would take pictures of my license plates with my tablet. My new camera, unfortunately, is lower resolution than my old camera.
My new tablet was $50 more than my old tablet, yet it is only half the tablet. The only upgrade was the OS, the battery life, and the size of the screen (which was achieved by making the pixels larger rather than adding more pixels). Everything else was a downgrade or was the same. The camera is the worst downgrade of all the downgrades, as the camera is much lower resolution than my old camera. It doesn't even have glass over the camera component, so I could quite literally sneeze into my camera and break it. Another major downgrade is the lack of an HDMI port. Apparently HDMI ports on tablets used to be a thing but as newer tablets were made I guess nobody wanted to have their games broadcast into a TV. I use my Xbox remote for gaming on my tablet anyways, so it still is somewhat like having a regular game system. Another thing I don't like about my new tablet is the position of the SD card slot. The slot is right in the open like every other SD card slot (which is dumb).
Back to the license plate images thing, I took my images very quickly. I grabbed a plate, took a picture, then put it into a box sloppily and grabbed another plate. Unfortunately I missed putting a plate into a box and threw it onto my pavement. I don't think the plate was damaged but now I have to wash it, so that'll be fun.
As I was taking images, there was a garbage truck that went by. EVERY time the garbage truck goes by, the first thing I think about is the license plate on the truck. Garbage trucks from my town are the only places where I have ever found N weight class Heavy Truck license plates. So, I looked at the plate, and memorized the number, NB 4842. I then proceeded to attempt to take a picture of the plate. It was sunny out, and unfortunately I couldn't see my screen and how the sun was washing out the entire image. I took images of individual license plate characters as a way to record the plate number in case the plate couldn't be read (which I'm glad I wrote the number down because I forgot the plate number later on).
I was expecting most of my images to be blurry, out of frame, and overall bad. When I looked at all my pictures after school, the plate images were fine. So, I guess this will be the last time in at least a few months that I will take my entire plate collection down for photography. EDIT: I just remembered I only took pictures of non-passenger plates, excluding some moped, older motorcycle, snowmobile, and bicycle plates, so I'm going to eventually take a whole bunch more pictures of plates.
For years I've kept taking my plates down for photography. It's just something I've done. The first time I took plates down for photography was for group images of my collection and just images to show my collection. I don't know why I did that, I guess just so I could enjoy my license plates in a medium other than sitting on my wall. I then took images so I could show people my plate collection.
Later on, I took images of my license plates for this book I was writing. I wasn't planning on releasing the book at any point. Then I took pictures of all my Wisconsin license plates for my website in October 2018. I took all my plates down recently to take temporary replacement photos, and now I've taken a lot of plates down for replacement photos, because as you can see right now a lot of images are broken, and the images that still work are not the best.
I have downloaded my old photos, and I'm now removing them from my site. This site is crowded enough as it is, and with all these images it just isn't practical anymore. This website takes too long for me to load each page, so I've removed the images from this site. Soon I will upload the old images to my other site, which I have no problem with uploading images there.
With this new image move, I will make the images smaller so it's faster for the site to load.
I'm adding many images exclusively of Heavy Truck and light truck for hire plates right now. I've spend the last week or so downloading, screenshotting, cropping, straightening, and uploading images. Expect many more images to come sometime soon, but I just added way too many images so I wouldn't count on it.
It's 11pm where I am now. Just another piece of proof I'm way too obsessed with Wisconsin license plates.
Right now, I've been working on bugfixing things. There have been multiple typos, floats I forgot to clear, and text just stuffed between images. I've fixed that now, and I will continue to fix problems as I find them.
I have also noticed that my images take too long to load. I'm going to make them smaller so that it don't take as long to load, and I will link the full size images in the images.
I also found 5 old images that I never used on this website at all. They were duplicates to images from another website I used to use, and an image from when I was going to add a stickers section. I have taken images of all the non-passenger stickers in my collection right now, and I'm going to crop them and eventually upload them to my website. I'm going to have to remove the old images and move them over to my other website because this website takes too long to load.
For 2 years, this website has been structured like crap. Everything is messy and unorganized, many parts of the website are broken in some way, and every serial range I provide I never, EVER do anything to make sure that I or others can verify it. That's changing now. All future updates to serial ranges I will add the date that I added the update, AND there will be a link to the source, if it is something that anyone can find.
All old stuff will be the same. I don't know when I added the updates, and many times I don't know where the number came from either. I can't verify that I didn't mess up somehow.
I'm also making all the tables consistent. Each table will have the first two columns reserved for the base and the variation, whether or not there is variations. I will provide a header for each table, because some people who are new here may not know what I'm talking about. I will add a caption on each table explaining that it is the number ranges.
Lastly, the code will be cleaned up as I work on it. The code is a nightmare to work on since it is so messy. It won't change anything for most people but for coders like me it is something I should have done a year ago.
I've been waiting on cleaning up this website for way too long now. I also need to stop waiting on adding the images. I've had broken images for nearly a year now that still haven't been added.
Also, off topic, but I've observed two different kinds of temporary plates: one that follows the A0000A format and one that follows an A0000AA format. The latter series had a number of BnnnnGE, and I unfortunately forgot the numbers. I don't know the difference between the two temporary plates. I also spotted a blue-on-white temporary plate that followed a 0000AA format, and the DMV inquiry tool comes up with temporary plates, yet I've double checked the number in that format and it has come up with nothing. Maybe it's from out of state?
The For Hire Lessor plates were supplemental plates for truck plates, kind of like PSC plates. Someone on the Wisconsin License Plates group asked the same question and they got that answer.
I was looking at the DOT website a few days ago, and I came across this:
Wisconsin now has Autocycle plates. I never knew Wisconsin had done this, so I looked it up and apparently the bill that created these plates was signed in November 2019. This would be the newest license plate type yet, and I know someone in my town who has one of those things and has a regular motorcycle plate on it.
Also, Heavy Truck plates for the R weight class have reached RB30721. I've also been paying attention to temporary plates. The low is TnnnnU and the high is T6690X. (the ns were written down on my notepad but I'm at school so I don't have the notebook)
I thought I would document the mystery plates here. There are two different bike-sized plates, one that says for hire lessor on it and the other just says "WIS FEB" on it. The for hire lessor plates I've seen before, but I've never known what they are. The current example I'm looking at is black on white and is dated 1971. The other plates are blue on black. What ARE they?
Since I last posted here, a lot has changed. First of all, I've bought a lot of license plates, mostly insert plates. The first bunch of plates came from eBay, the last pile of plates came from a shed and an antique shop
I also bought a notepad in June, and I've written down hundreds of numbers since then.
The other day I was in front of a store in Westby, WI, and there were a lot of new plates that drove by, a total of 10 plate numbers I had to memorize. I didn't have my notepad with me, so I had to memorize a lot of plates, XF10216, XR43423, DH20661, DR54690, DR54815, FB32324, TB4599, 351495F, 351731F, and DFnnnnn (I wrote that down immediately after I saw it). I also saw more plates after that, so I wrote the plates down. I saw GR10884 today, so I memorized that plate.
There is going to be a lot of updates in the next few days as I have 3 months of research to add.
Here is a list of plates that I've bought since I last posted:
1978 Heavy Truck, DB series, dated June 1978 and September 1979
1981-1985 Motor Home, dated March 1981 (partially), September 1981 (partially), March 1983, March 1984 (partially), March 1985
1980 Tractor, RA 962 something, dated December 1981
1984 Tractor, SA 273, dated December 1985
1994 Heavy Truck, EC 304, narrow prefix, dated December 2001
2002 Endangered Resources Red
1964 Farm
1966 Farm
1969 Farm
1973 Farm
1980 Farm
1994 Farm
1951 narrow dies steel
1975 Truck (with 1977 and 1978 sticker bits)
1984
1989 red with white back
1990 yellow borderless
1981
2009 Heavy Truck dated December 2019
1988 Heavy Truck
1988 Motor Home, dated March 1988
I've ordered some more license plates on eBay: one 1985 sticker mania motor home plate (likely with a 3rd quarter 1981 sticker and a 1983 sticker with the March 1985 sticker) and one pair of 1978 Heavy Truck plates (with one 2p 1978 sticker and one 3p 1979 sticker on each plate).
I dropped $50 on the plates in total. $25 came from my parents because I made the A honor roll at my school for getting a GPA of beteween 3.500 and 4.000, the other $25 I borrowed from my Cranfest fund.
I will add the images of the plates when I get them in the mail, which the estimated time is between tomorrow and Thursday, though with all the Minnesota burnings and protests they may never come. For all I know someone burned down the mail truck that is delivering the plates to me.
It is kind of boring being cooped up in my house day in and day out. I don't have great internet (because I'm on mobile hotspot as our house doesn't have wi-fi) so updates to this website will be rare until school comes back...
...Which, from what I hear, won't be until at least September. Though it is likely that frequent updates to this site won't come until 2021.
Even though COVID-19 has spoiled spring antique shopping (and possibly even Cranfest), that doesn't mean I haven't done anything with license plates.
Since the stay-at-home orders came, I have gotten 4 license plates. I will add images once I get them... though these days it's not going to happen anytime soon. First of all, there aren't many sunny days, and second of all I really hate taking pictures of license plates. I have to deal with getting it in the right area and making sure my tablet doesn't fall on my license plates again. Then I have to crop/straighten the photos, put the SD card in my Chromebook, then upload them to my Google site so my website doesn't take too long to load, then I have to add the image on to my website, copying the entire URL.
The first plate was actually pretty cool. It's a 1978 sticker mania insert farm plate. It's in really bad condition, but for $2.99 I couldn't say no. I wanted the plate a lot, and my mom said she would get it eventually. Unfortunately, the plate I wanted more (the one with the 1975 sticker on it) ended up selling. I told my mom that it had to be bought NOW or it will get swiped up. She ordered it, and made me leave it in the package for 4 days because of COVID-19 (even though there is little evidence that mail can transfer COVID-19). When I got the plate, it was bent on the bottom right corner. I blamed it on the mailman that jammed it diagonally in the mailbox. I opened the plate and realized that I actually got the license plate I wanted in the first place. Somehow they sent me the wrong plate of the pair. Mom made me soap the plate down (I tried to keep the dirt on it in case the person wanted the plates to be swapped and they like plates with dirt) and I waited for the feedback of the user. The person who got my plate left a positive review for the plate. They either didn't notice or thought it would be too much trouble to swap plates. Or maybe they just didn't care.
On Easter, I got $20 that I could cash out or use on eBay. I at first wanted to save it, as there was a plate meet a couple hours away around that time, and I wanted to keep the money in case we somehow go there (Quarantines stop, they postpone it, etc.). Then I figured it probably would be cancelled, so I asked mom for 2 more plates (and possibly a third one), and we were cut a deal on the most expensive one, which was a 1987 insert farm plate. My mom quickly picked up the plate, and I requested that they hold the plate because I was planning on getting more plates.
They had to send it out, otherwise they would get docked for not shipping in a timely manner (not their fault but it sucked). I found 2 more plates, and I asked what the shipping price would be for the two plates. One was a 1958 insert farm with no foreground paint left (basically just a white square), and the other was a 1983 insert farm plate that was 3 digits (it will go well with my 1982 insert farm plate, EA 196).
The plates came today... and I'm waiting on an answer as to when I can open them. I've done plenty of research and they keep saying that they will discuss it... even though I have legitimate sources that say I'm fine to open it. WebMD says that COVID-19 lasts on aluminum for 4-8 hours or so (which is what all three license plates are made of) and the CDC says there is very low risk of COVID-19 from mail. They say it might be possible if I was to touch the mail then my face, but to prevent that they say to use gloves or to wipe it down. It does not say to leave the package for multiple days untouched.
I will have to update this page when I take the pictures... which may be Thursday or maybe not until next week.
UPDATE SEPTEMBER 2020: Wow. I'm really procrastinating on updating my images. I spend 3 days cropping, straightening, renaming, and resizing hundreds of low resolution group photos from an auction website yet I can't spend an hour taking photos, cropping and straightening them, then uploading them to my website. I've taken the pictures, I'm just going to crop them in the near future and upload them on a different website so I don't clog up my website with pictures.
Also, an update to 2022 Wisconsin license plate stickers... I was looking at a farm plate that was parked, and I studied it closely. The sticker is actually black on tan.
Maybe that is one reason why it is a dumb idea to use black on tan and black on yellow stickers in the same year (and yes, in 2019 March and September stickers had that exact scenario. I misidentified the sticker color of June 2018 stickers for over a year because of that. They are also black on tan, though I haven't updated the sticker colors yet.)
Here is the color palette for 2019 insert stickers:
| Insert Stickers 2019 | Mar | Jun | Sep | Dec |
|---|
Unfortunately, the color palette for 2020 isn't much better. In recent years, it seems Wisconsin has gotten lazy when thinking of sticker colors for insert stickers... In 2016, they used pinkish-red and red in the same year! 2020 uses yellow and orange stickers... one quarter apart. Here is the color table for 2020:
| Insert Stickers 2020 | Mar | Jun | Sep | Dec |
|---|
All of those colors I have confused with each other. I've probably confused yellow and white, as they are very low contrast. Let's see what white on yellow looks like: bad contrast. I've also confused orange and pink. It's hard to tell the difference between a 2018 sticker and between a 2020 sticker. Come on, Wisconsin, multiple types jump from 2018 to 2020, and the contrast between the two is low enough that it can be hard to tell the difference at a glance. low contrast Also keep in mind that yellow and orange are not good mix... unless you are trying to make a graphic of a jack-o-lantern, which, in that case, it don't matter. But when it comes to law enforcement and validation of official identifiers, this kind of stuff is very important.
bad contrast
Wisconsin's sticker colors have been pretty basic since 2012: white, red, orange, yellow, mint, blue, black, pink, and tan. Very few sticker colors since 2012 have featured anything but black text (only two I can think of at all, and those are 2013 and 2014 September insert stickers). While it might have high contrast, that does not mean that it is high contrast compared to other sticker backgrounds.
This weekend, I went to La Crosse... specifically to Grandad's bluff and some stores.
On the trip to and from there, I was keeping my eyes peeled for new plate serials (as well as that annoying 2022 sticker). Instead of trying to memorize every serial and hope I'm not a number off, I decided to pull up SurvivalCraft (A Minecraft-like game) and write my notes on some green signs. I then got my tablet, got my chromebook, then typed my notes into the search bar, then added the notes to my website.
If I didn't know the highs or lows of a series, I just wrote down whatever plate it was. I ended up getting new high numbers for a bunch of Heavy Truck license plates, a new low for insert trailer license plates, and I learned about 2022 stickers (and 2021 Minnesota stickers).
One of the most elusive license plate stickers at the moment is 2022 stickers. Andrew Turnbull told me that someone said that 2022 sticker colors were planned to be black on white... and I wasn't so sure I believed whoever said that. I've been trying to find farm plates for a couple of weeks now... and almost all of the plates I have found either been expired or were only the front plates. Then came this slow farm truck hauling a small empty trailer that was dropping stray hay. I noticed the sticker didn't appear to be pink, so when we passed the farm truck I paid close attention to the sticker, which appeared to be yellow.
One of many things happened. One: I saw wrong. Two: Farm plates now have different sticker colors than passenger plates. Three: The person was wrong. Four: Wisconsin changed their mind at the last second.
What is amazing is that I originally predicted 2021 and 2022 stickers correctly. I predicted 2021 stickers to be black on blue back in 2018 after I saw that 2018, 2019, and 2020 stickers very closely resembled boat stickers expiring the same year. 2021 was blue, so I gave a guess that maybe 2021 would be blue (though I thought it to be unlikely). After Andrew Turnbull put 2021 as black on white on his color tables, I predicted 2022 to be black on yellow, because a lot of insert stickers had been using nothing but black, white, and yellow for sticker colors. 2020 was the year the trend made it to March stickers, and because of that, they couldn't use white again for September stickers, so they FINALLY changed the sticker color to orange. 2021 isn't known at the moment, though I wouldn't be surprised if March 2021 stickers were yellow.
At Grandad's bluff, we were driving by a house up on top of Grandad's bluff... and I spotted two license plates sitting on the fence that I believed to be Amateur Radio plates. I walked down to the house, and sure enough, they were Amateur Radio plates. I took some pictures, then left and cropped the pictures after I got home.
I've spent all weekend taking, cropping, straightening, resizing, renaming, and organizing about 200 license plate images. Most are from an auction site called wyoderauction.com (used with permission), but about 20-30 are my own images I took yesterday. I've uploaded them to my google site so that my website doesn't take an eternity to load. I only have about 50-75 images here, and it takes a long time to load this website.
Wow. It's been a long time since I've posted here. I decided to leave Code.org in January, after testing to see if I could host a site on Google Sites. I just decided to abandon that project, because it was too much work. My color tables kept breaking because of my crappy Javascript. I couldn't use side scroll since the site didn't support side scrolling, so I left that mess and decided to come back a month later.
See blog posts from: 2023-2024 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018