30,000 car plates are run daily
New Washington State license plates are coming off the production line at the Washington State Penitentiary at a clip to make a traffic officer dizzy.
W. F. Schiffman, supervisor of industries at the institution, said the total reached a million plates—500,000 sets—this weekend after 30 days of production.
The plant is turning out the green-and-white plates with the new combinations of three letters and three numbers at a 30,000-a-day pace. The inmates in key spots along the mechanized production line handle them with a speed that makes it look almost as though they were getting paid on a piecework basis.
(And one inmate commented to a Union-Bulletin reporter: “Man, if they would just give us a day off for each of these plates we turn out, it would be a right fine gesture. We’d make it home for Christmas.”)
The total project calls for the production of 1,500,000 sets. Schiffman says it should be completed by late January, “but we will have plenty of plates in hands of county auditors to meet all the demand they get at the first of the year.”
The production is on a county rotation basis. Enough plates have been produced for each county to meet the early January demand. Half of the plates for all of the big counties have been turned out and the plates for most of the small counties have been completed and boxed. For King County, for example, 160,000 sets have been finished and boxed for a 40-ton shipment to Seattle.
The work is proceeding on an around-the-clock schedule, with 45 inmates working on the day shift and 40 on each of the overnight shifts.
A total of 375 tons of aluminum will be used.
The first step is the cutting of the plates from huge rolls of green strip aluminum, that unrolls like ribbon at a notions counter. A steady clip-clip-clip of a big press cuts off the individual plates as fast as a man could pick them up.
Then the plates start around the production line where the letters and numerals are stamped and where a fast action machine paints the white characters. Then a network of moving overhead racks carry them on a 15-minute tour through the bake oven at 330 degrees.
The final step before checking and boxing is the application of the little ‘58 square in the lower corner. It goes on like a postage stamp with a hand roller. And Schiffman assures it will be as hard as a postage stamp to remove.
A storage area is piled high with boxes of the plates—100 sets to the box—awaiting shipment to the various counties.
Joe Drazan’s Bygone Walla Walla Project is a local nonprofit, non-commercial online effort to build and share a visual history of Walla Walla. See wallawalladrazanphotos.blogspot.com/.
