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Mobile Home & Manufactured Home

(See also House Trailer)
 
Mobile Home  “Mobile Home,” with the stacked MH prefix, is the designation which in 1973 superseded the original House Trailer designation (H prefix) of 1955, and which was itself was later eclipsed by the Manufactured Home designation in the early 1990s. These were undated permanent plates.

Manufactured Home  Originally introduced in 1955 as the H-prefix House Trailer plate, the trailer manufacturing industry became sensitive to the fact that the term “house trailer” had come to carry a negative connotation (as in “trailer trash”). In the early 1970s industry representatives began lobbying state officials, ultimately convincing them to change the name to “Mobile Home.” This was done and the license plates were redesigned with a corresponding stacked MH prefix. The first plates of this type were issued as undated permanent tags in 1973. Even that was insufficient to completely tamp down the trailer trash image so the industry went on yet another campaign to change the name once more. The chosen buzz word this time was “Manufactured Home,” which happened to have the same initials, making it unnecessary to change the alpha prefix. Later, in the early 1990s, the words “MANUFACTURED HOME” were embossed in full on the plates, while still retaining the MH prefix to the serial number. The same plates have been issued subsequently with the MH moved into a suffix position. Both the Mobile Home and Manufactured Home are undated permanent plates.

Although the plates illustrated below are all undated permanent plates, each style was originally issued during the approximate span of years indicated under each plate.  As permanent plates, though, they could remain in use indefinitely after the initial period of issue.
 
1973-1976 1977-1978 1979-1982 Type 1 1979-1982 Type 2 1983-1991
         
   
             1992-Present          1990s 2000-2010    

 

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