Alberta License Plates

Alberta High Plates	Print

The latest news from Alberta is that the proposed new issue (detailed below) has been put on indefinite hold. Until a new base is issued, the current base will be extended by expanding to an ABC-1234 configuration.
News from Rod Gough: The Alberta Government has undertaken a consultation to redesign the plates. A decision on the design is expected in early 2008, and a reissue is expected to start early 09. It is estimated this base's numbering combinations will be exhausted by April 09. The last plate to be issued should be TGU-999 since TGY-001 was the starting point for plates with vowels.
Alan Bones reports Alberta will officially announce details of the new design in January 2009, and the issue is expected to begin in the middle of 2009. The new issue will be reflective. No mention has been made as to whether the new issue will remain embossed or go flat.
Now, after all of these announcements over many months of planned changes, Alberta is not changing the design, nor are they going reflective. The only real change will be going to 7 characters in the 3 letter/4 number format with a hyphen between the letters and numbers. Plates will continue to be embossed and will feature different dies that will be smaller. Numbering will begin at BBB-0000.

Type	Plate	Notes	Reporter
Passenger	BBP-2552	Seven character plates are now in use. The dies appear to be the same Waldale dies used for Mississippi and Prince Edward Island. On the original 6 character series, after reaching the end of the YZZ series, the BAA series began. The Z series was not used for Passenger because it was used without vowels for All-Terrain vehicles earlier, but now it is being used with vowels for Passenger. Andrew Osborne saw a ZGH series plate, so it appears that they may now be using non-vowel Z series plates beyond the point where the Z series All-Terrain plates ended. The A series was skipped because the early part of the series was used for handicapped plates. The B series seems to be using just vowels so far since the original run of plates in the B through T series omitted vowels. The F series started at FVU, then reverted to FAA, FAB, and up, always with at least one vowel. Alan Bones reports that plates recently issued in the BSE series have been recalled because of the connotation with mad cow disease. The beef cattle industry is an important part of the economy in the province. Those plates had been issued in more than a half dozen communities. Rod Gough reports seeing two cars displaying BSE series plates, but it is unknown if the recall was mandatory. It appears that plates from ZBA-000 - ZFZ-999 may have been skipped since no Z vowel plates were ever issued to all terrain vehicles.	David Evans 9/04/10
Non-passenger Plates
Antique Auto	9-026		David Evans 7/04/10
ATV	ZGB-151	The ATV series has been discontinued. Standard Motorcycle plates are now being used for ATV.	Plate Finder Number One 7/04/09
Consular Corps	CC-1553	Fleet sticker on plate	Martijn Ten Ham 6/11/10
Dealer	M28338	Dealer plate allotment with D prefix exhausted. Plates have no divider. M23156 reported byPlate Finder Number One in the Vancouver area 2009-04-30, which is quite a jump from the last reported. Maybe one of those mysterious jumps? Now another mysterious jump to M25700 reported by Plate Finder on 2009-09-09.	David Evans 8/11/10
Farm	56-L645	Also used on semis depending on the license class of the vehicle. Series began as all-numeric at 00-0001 through 09-9999, then added letter in the third position, starting at A.	David Evans 8/08/10
Handicapped	AAD-229	AAA-151 reported as a low by Mike Franks.	David Evans 7/04/10
Historical Vehicle	K-550	"Historical Vehicle" sticker in one corner, and "Fleet" non-expiring sticker where the year sticker would normally be.	David Evans 6/13/10
Motorcycle-former	XYY-813		Bruno Vernhes 6/11/02
Motorcycle/ATV	ARB-24	The 2/5 series followed the 3/3 X series starting in 1999 at GD-001. After reaching ZZ-999, the series continued in the AA-001 range. The current format is exhausted, so it appears plates using the letter Q were used to fill in. The RQ series has also been seen, so Q appeared in the second position as well as the first. Having reached QZ-999, it appears that the new format is ABC12. ATV had its own type earlier, but regular Motorcycle is now being used for ATV.	David Evans 7/11/10
Rental Car	J-07809	Class 1 plates are used for rental cars, tour buses, and on the front of big trucks. The series started as a hyphenated all-numeric in the 1-12345 format, then 2-12345, then 3-12345, followed by the letters B, C, F, G, H, and J in the first position. It takes about 3 years to run through 99999 of these plates. As of July 2010, Rental plates are using the new 7 character dies. Original die high: J-03443 7 character die low: J-04409 The change appears to have been at J-04000.	Martijn Ten Ham 9/01/10
Trailer	Z996-81	New 7 character dies. The change was probably at Z800-00. David Allyn Brown reports that trailer plates began at 0000-1A, with suffixes of B, C, D, then reverted to all-numeric 4000-00 through 9999-99. Next came the letter prefixes, leaving the divider between the fourth and fifth characters. (The divider position signifies the licence category in Alberta.) The letter prefixes employed so far are N, P, R, S, T, V, W, X, Y, and Z.	David Evans 8/01/10
Specialty Plates
Veteran	VVV9R	Issued in the VAA01 format. It appears the format has changed to VVV1A.	Martijn Ten Ham 7/15/10

Alberta High Plates