In the mail a few weeks ago I received an annual notice from the Dallas County Treasurer. It was time to renew our automobile license tags. We own two cars so the total amount due smacked this frugal Dutchman right between the eyes.

Being a pragmatic guy and understanding that taxes and death are two of life’s certainties, I submitted payment.

I had nearly forgotten the pain when a couple of weeks later, the mailman brought us the renewal stickers AND brand-new license plates for one of our cars.

The old plates were nearly 10 years old and dated back to when we moved to Dallas County. Nine years of renewal stickers stuck out from the flat rear license plate. The front plate had been bent several times by the whirling brushes of an automatic car wash. Just a week ago I tried to flatten it out again.

So now my car has shiny new license plates. Frankly, getting new plates instead of just two tiny adhesive renewal stickers at least made me feel like I got more for my money this year.

I have been paying attention to license plates since I was a youngster.

About the time I started noticing such things, our license plates proudly proclaimed Iowa as “The Corn State.” Back in the mid-1950s small metal tags bearing the year of issue were clipped to an upper corner of the plate to show that the annual fee had been paid. This was the precursor of the little sticker we use today.

A big change in our Iowa license plates took place four decades ago when the state switched from its county-number system to the alpha-numeric classification required for a federal computer system.

The county number system was popular in Iowa. Plates issued in Adair County, at the head of the alphabetical list of 99 counties, bore the “1” designation. At the end of the list, Wright County vehicles bore a 99 on their license plates.

I grew up in Hamilton (40) County and my grandparents lived in Grundy (38) and Kossuth (55) counties. When Uncle Gerrit came to visit from Polk County, his car’s license plates bore county number 77.

When traveling it was fun to watch for cars from your own or neighboring counties. As a kid, I knew many of the number/county designations. I should have done so well in science class.

The controversy over dropping the numeric county designation, I recall, resulted in a compromise which continues today. The plates issued in each county now bear the county’s name. You don’t have to memorize county numbers any longer, but you do have to have good eyesight to read the small type.

The state made a major improvement in auto licensing some years ago when the time to renew auto registration was changed from the first of the year to the month of the owner’s birthday.

For many years, weary vehicle owners stood in line at their county courthouse in December and January to renew their vehicle licenses. Back in the days of numeric county designation, the plates were normally issued in numerical sequence. The desire to have a low number often resulted in long lines on the first day new plates were sold.

Of course, December-January renewal meant that the new plates had to be mounted in the dead of winter.

Always anxious to help my father with car things, I volunteered to mount the new plates each year starting when I was about 12 years old. For those with heated garages and the foresight to put a few drops of oil on the metal mounting bolts and nuts when the previous plates were mounted the task was easier. For the rest of us it meant lying on a snow-packed driveway fighting rusted bolts and nuts with fingers numbed by the cold. Our family had a garage but it was at the back of the lot and seldom used.

I am pleased with today’s much easier methods of attaching the license plates to the vehicles and, of course, my garage.

License plate pain was further eased when county treasurers began promoting registration renewal by mail. These days the most painful thing about auto licensing procedures in Iowa is the fee.

Arvid Huisman can be contacted at huismaniowa@gmail.com. © 2025 by Huisman Communications.