Massachusetts needs new license plates

There is only one state in the union with older license plates on the street than Massachusetts. Our green license plates date back to 1977, which means there are cars on the street with 31 year old plates.

This presents a problem that goes beyond the wear and tear that fades and cracks a 31-year-old piece of aluminum in harsh New England weather. If you don't retire the old plates, and restart a new series of plates, you exhaust many millions of available letter-number combinations.


Consider the math. The first series of license plates had three letters and three numbers, and the first digit was never a 0. The letters I, O, and Q were never used.

For math geeks, these rules create 12,167 different letter combinations. Each three digit number can generate 900 plates (numbers 100-999), so the 12,167 letter combinations generate 10,950,300 possible plates.

When Massachusetts exhausted the three-letter three-number combinations, they simply reversed the order, generating another 10,950,300 possibilities. In 1987 the Registry started manufacturing the red "Spirit of Massachusetts plates, and they stopped issuing the green plates in the early 1990s.


Soon after the red plates began to appear, the NNNLLL combinations were exhasted, and the state went to a series of two letter - four number plates. Given the same rules, four number-two letter plates generate 4,761,000 combinations. Reversing the order generates another 4,761,000 plates. Those combinations were exhausted, and the state then placed the two letters in the middle of the number combination. That generates another 4,761,000 plates.


This numbering scheme is now exhausted, and we appear to be going to a scheme of three digits, two letters, followed by another number.


This now results in a combination where a plate can now be 123 LD0, where the last character is the number zero. (Someone familiar with the Massachusetts registration scheme can tell the last digit is a zero and not the letter O because the plate expires in October, not January.) This creates confusion in 10% of the plates distributed under this new scheme. In addition, having multiple (and increasingly complicated) schemes makes it more difficult to remember a plate number in an emergency.


Plus, as an extra bonus, the first generation of red plates is aging to the point where they are fading like the old greenies.

So, here we are in a state of 6.4 million people, and we have exhausted more than 37 million possible plate combinations (including the 900,000 number-only plates from 100000 to 999999).


Massachusetts issued new plates every year prior to 1949, when the state issued new plates every two years. In 1967, the state went to undated plates (blue on white), then red on white (around 1972), replaced by the current green on white starting in March, 1977.

What should new plates look like?

Given that we need to retire the red and the green plates to reuse the 37 million combinations that are exhausted in the current scheme, we need to change the color of the plate and possibly devise a new design. The state police have already converted to new plates with blue characters.


Some states have incorporated art into their plates, and that's not a bad thing. Massachusetts was one of the first, incorporating our sacred cod into the 1928 plate. Perhaps it is a time for it to return, now that the technology for artistic enhancements has improved.




The Spirit of Massachusetts is the Spirit of America?
It was a state tourism promotion that dates back to the Dukakis administration, but half of this slogan lurks on our license plates today. I doubt it does little to promote tourism. Maybe we don't need a slogan on the plates, but if we place something on our plates it should be something that actually sells the state. I'll happily leave that to the imagination of BMG readers.