[andrea3821]

Originally Posted by James Bond 007

I lived in Seattle for some 25 years until several years ago, and I always noticed a lot of Florida license plates there. This seemed really odd since Florida was literally the farthest-away state from Washington state. Why would so many people drive so far? I could see that maybe a lot of people might fly to Seattle from Florida, but drive?? Seriously, I think Florida plates were about the 4th or 5th most common out-of-state plates I saw there.

A co-worker at a job I worked at noticed this as well, and he theorized that, since there were a lot of Navy installations around Puget Sound, that maybe all these Florida plates were Navy enlistees. He noted that military people stationed at a base in another state from where they live can keep their home state plates. So maybe there happened to be a lot of Naval enlistees and officers from Florida stationed around Seattle. Plus there's Fort Lewis and McCord AFB south of Tacoma, adding to the military presence.

OK ... maybe. Seemed like a reasonable theory.

Fast forward several years, and I'm now in Kansas City. Guess what? I see a lot of Florida plates here, too. Like, probably the 5th or 6th most common out-of-state plates (not counting both Missouri and Kansas, of course). I am certain I see a lot more Florida plates than California plates, even though they're both about the same distance away (and California is considerably larger than Florida, too, and thus would have more drivers).

Fort Leavenworth is nearby here, but I don't think it's big enough of an Army base to account for all the Florida plates I see here. I can think of no other reason.

Does anybody in other states notice this?

Is it retired people in Florida visiting relatives, and they prefer to drive long distances instead of flying? After all, there's a ton of retired people in Florida who undoubtedly hail from all over the US.

But do so many retired people really like to drive for, like, 2 or 3 days? Or 5 days to get to Seattle? If I were retired I don't think I'd like to spend that much time driving, even though I had a ton of free time on my hands.

Aside from that I can't think of any other reason, and that reason doesn't seem very probable.

From 2010 to 2018, we relocated between three different states a total of six times. I did not always get a new tag when we did this. I would guess that’s the main reason.

There is also the fact that Florida’s tax-friendliness has a lot of RVers and other travelers register their vehicles here and that kind of thing.