This week's 'Ask Evan question comes from Butch K. Butch asks, "Recently I noted my brother in law's license plate was really beat up and faded and I looked at mine and it too was faded and worn. That got me thinking that we haven't gotten a new license plate in PA for a number of years. I recall that we used to get a new one it seemed like every few years. Has there been a change in the frequency of getting new license plates from the Commonwealth?"
Here's the information I got from PennDOT. Nearly 20 years ago PennDOT undertook a massive effort to replace all of the yellow and blue background registration plates and transitioned the commonwealth to the 'family of plates' design concept.
As far as getting a new license plate- the old school way of reissuing plates was a high cost program. In January of 2018, PennDOT began a targeted registration license plate re-issuance for older Pennsylvania license plates that may be weathered, damaged, or unreadable. Owners of standard-issue passenger plates that start with the license plate configuration of `D`, `E`, `F`-- and truck plates that start with `Y` will get a free new registration plate the next time their plate is transferred to a different vehicle.
You can also apply for a free new license plate by visiting an official Pennsylvania inspection station to verify the plate is illegible. You'll get a PennDOT MV-46 form to send in. You can also have a police officer verify the plate is bad and send in a MV-44 form. Both forms are available on PennDOT's website.
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