Automatic License Plate Scanners

The technology available to repossession services is finally entering the 21st century. Automatic license plate scanners are now available from several different vendors. What is an automatic license plate scanner and how is this new technology going to make your repossession service more money?

Most people are unaware that the police have used automatic license plate scanners for years. The technology is almost 10 years old and it has been perfected. The price for automatic license plate scanners has come way down and will continue to fall as competition in the industry is increasing.

So what is an automatic license plate scanner? In the law enforcement version the police car is equipped with several cameras that are hooked up to a computer that is running optical character recognition software. In layman's terms the computer is programmed to recognize license plates and read them as well. The computer goes through the internet and checks the states BMV computers. The computer notifies the police office if a car has an expired license plate, if the owner of a vehicle has a suspended drivers license, or if the owner of the car has a warrant for their arrest. Sure makes the police department's job much easier.

These automatic license plate readers can read license plates from up to 500 feet away! At least that's what the manufacturers of automatic license plate scanners are claiming. Most of the automatic license plate scanners out there are really only effective at reading license plates up to 300 feet. That is still quite an impressive (almost scary) distance.

The repossession service version of the automatic license plate scanner works as follows. The automatic license plate scanner is hooked up to a tow truck. As the truck drives through the hood at night, the truck is making note of every license plate that it drives by and reads. The computer stores the license plate number, the date, time, and GPS coordinates for every vehicle that your repossession truck drives by. You can manually enter license plate information into the computer's hot sheet. If you happen to drive by one of the license plates on your trucks hot sheet, the computer will notify you to repossess the black Lexus you just passed by and the license plate that is on it.

You can also search the data your repossession trucks have stored by entering a license plate from a new repossession order. If your trucks have seen the plate you will get a printout showing the date, time, and GPS coordinates for every time your repossession truck has seen that plate.

You will have to get access to your states BMV records in order to convert the vehicle's VIN number to a license plate. California and Virginia repossessors are going to be left out in the cold since those two state's BMV's will not release license plate data.

This is a giant step forward in repossession technology. In ten years we will look back and wonder how we ever found cars to repossess without it. The price for automatic license plate scanners has started to come down, and should continue to fall as more manufactures enter the marketplace.