There seem to be several ways different states and provinces handle the act of replacing plates. One way is not to replace them at all (or alternately, replace them when the powers that be acknowledge that a goodly portion of plates in use have crumbled to dust.) Another way is to replace them outright every few years at all-too-often intervals, going to the pain of starting a new series from scratch and stamping out millions of new plates more often than otherwise necessary. The third way is the so-called "rolling replate," whereby older plates are routinely replaced with newer ones in a gradual, continuous x-year loop.
Admittedly, I have mixed feelings about rolling replates. Being numerically-oriented, I like it when a numbering series is maintained continually over a long period of time (with various bases and variations progressing chronologically within), and a rolling replate may or may not result in this happening. On the positive side, a regular turnover of plates results in more plates being available to collectors. On the other hand, it's always fun to spot older license plates and base designs still in use on vehicles (particularly when the plate in question is original with the car), and replacement procedures necessarily prevent this from happening. Washington state plate-spotting has become infinitely more boring since a rolling replate eliminated the varied green-on-white plates of 1963 to 1986 from the roads.
A couple weeks ago, I returned from a week-long trip to Wisconsin by train. (The trip in question was one on which various drama erupted and I temporarily lost my luggage for good measure, but that's a story for another day.) Plate-wise, the state's last complete passenger reissue occurred in 1979, and older base designs have gradually been phased out by newer ones over the years since then.
Some people seem to swear that Wisconsin operates on a seven-year rolling replate. But that isn't the case. While the oft-faded red-on-white plates have indeed been falling by the wayside in favor of the newer black-on-white tags since 2000, the oldest plates were already twelve years old by the time replacement finally rolled around.
This year, the oldest Wisconsin plates I personally spotted in use were from the "P" prefix series...also well over seven years old by this point, and in fact dating to the mid '90s. Roughly one car in five still bears the pre-2000 red-on-white plates. Furthermore, the variety of plates in use is practically identical to that I had spotted three years earlier: It would seem that almost no plates have been replaced since then, and almost no effort has been made at replacing the red-character plates with narrow dies (which first appeared in the mid "N" series).
![[Wisconsin license plate designs]](wis-replate.jpg)
Going back a bit in time, we find that Wisconsin did operate on something closer to a seven-year "rolling replate" the last time a new design was phased in: The black-on-yellow plates of 1979 to 1986 were gradually replaced in a procedure concluding in mid-1993, and the short-lived blue-on-white plates that came thereafter were replaced in 1993 and 1994. Even then, however, exceptions permeate the rules: I've heard that a few black-on-yellow plates survived into 1994, and I've seen several at plate meets that have sticker stacks ten years deep.
If Wisconsin doesn't always replace license plates at seven-year intervals, however, by which criteria does it replace them? I'm inclined to suspect that serial blocks, not strict issue dates, are used as the determining criteria: Since the old black-on-yellow plates employed multiple formats with month coding, that could have easily skewed things a bit. The "CEJ" prefix plate off my grandparents' car, being an earlier red-on-white plate from a lower serial block, was replaced in late 2000; soon after the latest replate procedure commenced. Just what serial blocks correlate with replacement in what years, however, is unknown to me.
What do the official regulations and literature say? If anything, they indicate that the circumstances that are aren't necessarily the circumstances that were originally planned. The May 2000 Wisconsin Department of Justice Time System Newsletter (no longer online) notes:
"DMV will begin reissuing license plates
beginning in May 2000. [...]
Replacement will occur over a five-year
period, starting with the oldest plates. [...]
All light trailer plates will be replaced in May.
The five-year cycle for replacing auto and light truck plates will begin in mid June. Disabled plates will also begin to appear in mid June and will continue to be issued over a twelve-month period. All dual-purpose vehicle and dual-purpose
farm plates will be replaced in January of 2001 and all motor homes will see new plates in March of 2001. Heavy truck and
motorcycle plates are not currently scheduled for replacement."
Where does that leave the status of the replacement procedure, seeing that it's obviously taken neither five nor seven years to complete? The WisDOT website leaves a brief but subtle clue:
"The plates are being phased in over a multi-year period as new registrations are issued and as customers request replacement plates."
Judging by that, it would seem that the systematic replate procedure has been suspended altogether, with the remaining red-on-white plates now slated to be phased out by attrition and motorist request alone.
It will be interesting to see how things pan out from here: Will red-on-white plates remain in use indefinitely? I wouldn't mind if that was indeed the case: Most of the badly-faded plates (invariably from batches in the early '90s) were replaced long ago, and the P-to-W series plates still in use seem by comparison relatively impervious to wear. It's always fun to spot a variety of plates in use on the road, in any case!
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