License Plates Aren’t Random

When I was a kid, my cousin Marsha worked at the DMV in a town of 2,500 people. She said the plate often told her what area of town someone lived in. I forgot about that until someone else mentioned it the other day, so I dug in.

This is what I found.

Most drivers treat plates like visual static. A little rectangle of state art, a string of letters and numbers, nothing more. Inside the system it is brutally simple. A plate is a unique identifier tied to a record. The real story lives in the database. The visible characters only need to be unique, durable, and readable by humans and cameras in bad conditions. That’s the assignment. Not personality. Not politics.

General-issue formats run on sequence. Agencies pick a pattern and advance it like a counter. ABC 1234, then ABC 1235, then ABC 1236. When the combinations near the end, they roll to a new pattern and keep counting. Certain letters get skipped because they collide with numerals. Offensive strings get weeded out. Nothing mystical there. Boring on purpose because boring prevents errors at 70 miles an hour.

Numbers do even less than rumor claims. In general-issue formats they carry the sequence forward. On some special classes the mix of letters and digits can mark vehicle type or program, but everyday passenger metal is intentionally plain. The sensitive fields sit inside the motor-vehicle record where clerks and officers can see them. Not on your bumper.

A quick state snapshot. Not all states are identical, but the pattern repeats pretty consistently everywhere.

• California runs long sequential series and a large special-plates ecosystem. The general issue still behaves like a counter.

• Texas uses a clean ABC-1234 style sequence statewide. The logistics block effect is obvious in busy county offices.

• Florida keeps a sequential core with broad specialty options; production mixes correctional industry and vendor processes.

• Nebraska issues sequentially through correctional industries; legislative shifts can change capacity.

• Arkansas lists plates among correctional-industry products and filters out offensive combinations.

• Mississippi law favors correctional-industry production for standard plates; sequencing remains the public constant.

• South Carolina produces through a corrections program with familiar readability choices and block distribution.

• Maine has toggled between correctional industries and contracted vendors during large reissues. Serial logic stays sequential to the public.

Notice the throughline. What you see is a serial marching forward, fed to offices in boxes. Your letters do not reveal your street. They reveal which counter’s inventory you touched that month. That’s it.

Myths, cut short. A standard passenger plate does not display a secret county code that tells the world where you sleep. It does not carry your criminal history or immigration status in the visible string. It is not a public dossier. Agencies rely on readability and database checks, not folklore. When people swear an officer “knew” they were out of place by the letters, they are usually seeing the block effect plus human pattern-seeking, not a lawful code. If a department runs automated readers, hits are driven by database flags, not by the charm or curse of a prefix.

Practical notes. Keep the face clean and unobstructed; frames that cover characters or the state name can earn valid stops. Replace damaged plates early because reflectivity decays with age and chemicals. Expect states to retire designs on a schedule for legibility and fraud control. And when a state flips from embossed to flat or back again, assume it is about throughput, cost, and machine readability, not cheapness or fashion.

Do prisoners make license plates?

Manufacturing plates is industrial. Some states emboss characters, others print flats on high-grade reflective sheeting. Both can be built for machine capture, anti-counterfeit layers, and long service life. Many states buy from private vendors, sometimes switching routes as contracts or capacity change. Either way, what rolls out of the plant follows legibility rules that favor clear shapes, specific spacing, and strong contrast. If it reads fast at bad angles in rain and road grime, the design did its job.

For over a century, plate production has been a staple of U.S. prison industry programs. A large share of states use incarcerated workers to stamp or assemble plates; some still do. Typical flow: a corrections-run factory or vendor shop feeds blank aluminum through presses, applies reflective sheeting and graphics, and embosses or prints serials according to pre-set runs assigned to motor-vehicle agencies. Government frames this as skills training and cost control; critics point to very low wages and coercion. Both can be true depending on the state and conditions. Either way, if your plate was made in a prison, it says something about how your state sources government manufacturing, not about you.

If you grew up hearing that the first three letters mean “your side of town,” you were seeing the shadow of an internal supply chain. The shadow looks like a code from the street. Inside the building it’s inventory discipline. A plate is a barcode with better manners. Treat it that way and the whole system finally makes sense.

Sources That Don’t Suck:

American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (license plate and LPR best-practice documents)

Minnesota Department of Public Safety – Driver and Vehicle Services (format guides and plate policies)

Texas Department of Motor Vehicles – license plate specifications and sequence histories

California Department of Motor Vehicles – public notices on serial sequence changes and plate programs

California Prison Industry Authority (program overviews for plate manufacturing)

PRIDE Enterprises, Cornhusker State Industries, Arkansas Correctional Industries, Mississippi Prison Industries, South Carolina Department of Corrections – program materials and annual reports

3M – license plate reflective sheeting product bulletins

National Academies Transportation Research Board – human and machine legibility research for traffic control devices