The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area General Truck Talk Task Force Trucks assembled in Oakland Vin question

I purchased a 1955 Suburban a few years ago and was issued a clear title. I had looked on the frame but couldn’t find the VIN stamping. I recently read a post on another forum about the frame stamping and was able to locate my VIN with information from that post. The code for the assembly plant Oakland Ca. is a capital O. On the frame stamping the O looks different than the next digit, a zero. I noticed the O on the VIN tag looks like a zero, and the O on my registration looks like a zero. I searched on-line for vin tags from the Oakland plant, and they all look like zeros where there should be an O, so 000 instead of O00. I have pasted a few examples and attached the pictures here.
My question is this: Does anyone with a vehicle from the Oakland plant have an O on their tag or paperwork? Or were the O’s replaced with 0’s consistently?
The first image in the first picture is my frame stamping. Notice the last digit, a 3, has been hashed out and a 4 placed above it. An example of human error. The next two images are of a matching frame and tag showing the differences between O and 0. The fourth image is a frame stamping with the O. The rest of the images are trucks and cars tags that I found on-line. Either the O and 0 look the same, or an error was made.

Interesting stuff.

I think the confusion between an "I" and a 1 is why GM sometimes avoided using I in identification numbers, although they were used in 1947-52 AD's to indicate the production month of September which appears right before the actual serial number. They skipped over I when indicating year model, H being 1950 and J being 1951.

LMC catalog has the information for 1953-59 serial numbers (attached below.) I notice it doesn't have some of the prefixes shown on your examples, Walter. They must be for the larger trucks (or panels and 'burbs,) as LMC's data only goes up thru 3600.

[on edit] your examples 1, 2, and 4 in your first picture appear to have an O, which looks a bit fatter than the 0 next to them.

Based on your examples it looks like the frames all got the "oh" while the door post tags got "zeros"...It probable never really mattered to GM as they knew the digit following the YEAR was the "plant" and represented a letter, even if it looked like a number.

Mike B