California license plate: Commercial
Issued today Documented since 2026. Standard plates for truck, van, and bus, issued by California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV). One of 14 California license plates.
Format, years and the law
- Format
-
99999L9, for example12345R(L is any letter, 9 any digit)You can tell a California truck from a car by arrangement alone: commercial serials run digit-heavy, 12345A1, against the passenger 1ABC234. No character encodes anything; the shape of the serial is the code.
The format above follows the issuing rules: a registration that fits it is one this series could have issued.
- Years issued
- Documented since 2026; the format is likely older than the first year documented. Still issued.
- Vehicle class
- Standard: the default series issued to private road vehicles. Issued for truck, van, and bus.
- Colours
-
Characters
#17195EBackground#FFFFFF - Size
- 12 × 6 in (305 × 152 mm) · every country's size
- About this plate
- COMMERCIAL PLATES. The same caveat Florida records for its Wrecker plate. The value of this entry is that its format is AGENCY-SOURCED, a US commercial-plate format with a citation is unusual, and that it shows how VIRPM 21.180's negative list (what a vanity applicant may NOT ask for) is in fact a positive catalogue of California's live series.
Legal basis and sources
- VIRPM 21.180: '5 numbers; 1 letter' (12345R) and '5 numbers; 1 letter; 1 number' (11111A1), License Type Commercial https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/handbook/vehicle-industry-registration-procedures-manual-2/special-plates/personalized-...
- VIRPM Appendix 1E .0110: the commercial series history, 1963-1969 A00000-Z99999 or 00000A-99999Z on the black base; 1970-1980 00000A-99999Z on the blue base; 1975-1980 also 1A00001-3Z99999 https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/file/vr-manual-appendix-1e/
Before and after
This plate in your app
The series id is us-ca-commercial. The API returns its format, validation, colours and designs with the rest of California's series:
curl -s https://vehiclesdb.com/api/v1/plates/us-ca \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $VEHICLESDB_API_KEY" \ | jq '.series[] | select(.id == "us-ca-commercial")'
- Plate image (SVG, sample serial): https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/us-ca/us-ca-commercial.svg
- Blank template, filled on your side: https://vehiclesdb.com/plates/us-ca/us-ca-commercial/template.svg
