In Sweden, a registration plate in most cases has black characters on a white background. There are also license plates with an orange, blue, yellow, blue and green background, as well as with a red background and white characters.
However, sometimes you also see vehicles with black license plates with yellow letters. These can be fitted to all sorts of vehicles, and instead of the usual combination of letters and numbers and numbers, they only have a number between three and six digits long.
Here is the answer to what they mean.
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Who can use a black license plate?
The answer is that a black license plate with yellow numbers is used on the Armed Forces’ vehicles.
The plate was already introduced in 1941. Before that, military vehicles had a normal civilian registration plate, with an additional plate with three black crowns on a white background – a layout still used by the military on civilian and hired vehicles.
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Has its own register
The Defense Forces’ vehicles are not registered in the road traffic register at the Swedish Transport Agency, but in the Military Vehicle Register administered by the Defense Materiel Administration.
The military registration plates thus do not follow exactly the same format as other Swedish registration plates.
For example, the typeface is in many cases the same as that used on civilian license plates until the current format was introduced in 1973.
Recently, however, other fonts have also started to be used.
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Does not follow the Swedish Transport Agency’s standard
The fact that the Swedish Armed Forces independently rules over its vehicle register means that it is not as standardized as the equivalent at the Swedish Transport Agency.
In some cases, the registration numbers are adapted according to the type of vehicle they are on. The plate in the picture above, with a registration number starting with 20, is for example on a vehicle of the model Terrainbil 20.
Shorter registration numbers with only three or four digits are often used on motorcycles, while armored vehicles in many cases have the registration number painted directly on the body.
Basically, all defense vehicles are equipped with a registration plate, regardless of whether it is a car, a truck, a tank or a motorcycle.
In military parlance, the registration number is also called “individual number”.
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