These plates are used on funeral hearses.
Undertaker plates started in the mid 1920s with a ‘U’ prefix. These continued on various bases until the present, gaining the “Hearse” caption in the 1980s. The ‘U’ prefix for undertaker remained until early 2016.
Sometime after the “blue fade” plates were introduced these plates were issued in the U-8000 series, as opposed to the typical U-123 format. Some of these new plates are missing the “U” designation. As of early 2016, over 90 years of tradition was ended when the ‘U’ was dropped in favor of the generic AB-12345 numbering format used on nearly every other type. It is unclear why this was necessary as there was no danger of running out of ‘U’- series numbers for anytime in the foreseeable future.
Click the photo to see this type in use.
1938 Undertaker
Expiring 1967 Undertaker/Hearse
ca. 1967 issue used until the general reissue in 2000.
ca. 1990s Hearse.
Same number as above, as seen approximately 60 years later.
ca. 2006 Hearse