A Toronto-area heavy-duty repair shop owner recently became suspicious when a normally steady stream of local trucks seeking annual safety inspections stopped showing up. When he began seeing those same units coming to his shop in various states of disrepair, yet with shiny new FMCSA inspection stickers affixed, his suspicions grew.
Some of the customers told him they found a cheaper service provider for safety inspections elsewhere. But he also noticed each of those trucks and trailers from a variety of trucking companies were certified by the same Illinois repair shop, ATG Repair.
The U.S. and Canada have reciprocity agreements regarding annual inspection stickers, and there are legitimate reasons why a Canadian company may choose to have its inspection done in the U.S. Perhaps the company has an existing relationship with a U.S. shop, or maybe it was able to reduce downtime by taking advantage of a cross-border driver’s mandatory hours-of-service reset.
However, the shop owner could think of no possible explanation for so many Ontario-based trucks and trailers to have all been inspected by the same shop in Cook County, Ill. Stranger yet, these trucks carrying ATG Repair stickers, but belonging to different companies, frequently congregated in the same Mississauga yard.
The shop owner, whose name is being withheld over personal concerns of retribution, hired a licensed private investigator whose findings paint a picture of a widespread scheme involving the issuance of Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration (FMCSA) inspection stickers in Ontario without the mandatory related inspections.
Trucknews.com has reviewed the findings of that investigation, after whistleblower complaints to the Ontario Ministry of Transportation, DriveON, federal Minister of Transportation and U.S. FMCSA yielded limited, if any, responses. Trucknews.com also interviewed its own sources to corroborate the private investigator’s findings and conducted additional research of its own in compiling this report.
What is an FMCSA inspection sticker?
By law, every truck and trailer operated in both Canada and the U.S. must undergo an annual safety inspection. A decal is affixed to units that pass, while units that don’t pass must have necessary repairs completed before they are allowed to continue operating.
The reciprocity agreement means a sticker awarded in the U.S. is recognized in Ontario and vice-versa, but to be compliant, Ontario trucks obtaining a sticker in the U.S. must have additional work — such as an emissions test — done upon returning to Ontario.
The repair shop owner who launched the investigation told trucknews.com the typical cost for an annual safety inspection is about $800-$1,000 for a tractor and $500-$650 for a trailer in the Toronto market.
It takes about seven hours of labor by a licensed mechanic to complete a tractor inspection and four to five hours to safety a trailer, he said.
Who is ATG Repair?
While FMCSA-issued stickers aren’t required to be branded with the name of the shop that conducted the inspection, those issued by ATG Repair were conspicuously labeled. These stickers also displayed ATG’s address as 1293 Industrial Drive in Lake in the Hills, Ill.
Public records searches indicate the business was founded in 2014, owned in 2015 by Oleksandr Popovych and later by Tanya Popovych. Both are affiliated with a trucking company called Vista Trans Holding, which has an office address of 8 Prosper Court, Lake in the Hills, Ill.
Mapquest lists ATG Repair being based at that same Prosper Court address. A related firm, Vista Trans Freight, also has an FMCSA SAFER broker profile that shared the address on ATG’s stickers at 1293 Industrial Drive.
Vista Trans Holding, headquartered at the 8 Prosper Court address, is billed on LinkedIn as “the leading enterprise on the U.S. market and an international cargo shipment company,” and Oleksandr Popovych as a serial entrepreneur who is its CEO and founder.
It operates 410 power units and has an FMCSA-reported vehicle out-of-service rate of 28%, above the 22% national average. Its website lists heavy-hitter shippers such as Walmart, Amazon and FedEx among its partners.
Oleksandr Popovych’s LinkedIn profile makes no reference to ATG Repair. Tanya Popovych is listed on LinkedIn as president of Vista Trans, but her profile also makes no mention of ATG Repair, despite being listed on corporate records as its president. Trucknews.com connected with Oleksandr Popovych on LinkedIn and asked about his connection to ATG Repair. The message appeared as read, but no response was received five days later. A request for a personal email address to which questions about ATG could be sent, was also unanswered.
ATG Repair stickers clearly say “An electronic record of this vehicles [sic] inspection report is maintained at: 1293 Industrial Drive, Lake in the Hills, IL, 60156.” Google Street View showed the location as home to R&B Body, not ATG Repair, and street-level images revealed a vacant lot. So, we decided to visit.
What we saw
Suzanne Stempinski is a semi-retired trucking industry journalist and former owner-operator living in Illinois. We asked her to visit ATG Repair to see if there was any sign of activity.
She visited 1293 Industrial Drive, the address on the FMCSA stickers, and found it was directly adjacent to the Vista Trans Holding trucking company at 8 Prosper Court. She went into Vista Trans to inquire about ATG Repair, but there was no one there (it was a Saturday).
She went around the back and found a bustling repair shop where people were milling about, working on company equipment. Stempinski spoke to several of the employees, who were wearing Vista Trans shirts.
“There was no signage either inside or outside that said ATG. Anywhere. Only Vista,” she reports. “The people working there also had Vista logos on their uniform shirts. The trucks and trailers were all Vista. I asked if they worked on equipment other than theirs, as Mapquest had identified this as ATG’s location. They assured me that yes, this was ATG, but that there was no manager there until Monday at 8 a.m.
“I told them I was just looking for a shop for future reference, but that I was a little confused since I only saw Vista signage and nothing for ATG. They told me not to worry and to call on Monday. They watched me as I left. I did not see any trucks from other companies – just Vista,” Stempinksi reported.
Why are so many Ontario trucks being certified by ATG Repair?
It seemed unusual that so many Ontario-domiciled trucks and trailers would’ve come across this small, seemingly unpromoted Illinois shop with no visible signage or branding. Ontario restricts the number of safety certificate stickers issued to each licensed mechanic, based on an expectation of how many such inspections they can reasonably complete. The U.S. has no such restrictions or limits on how many inspection stickers are issued to any given shop. In fact, you can even order FMCSA inspection decals online, though most providers won’t ship to Canada.
It’s difficult to know how many trucks and trailers have been certified by ATG Repair. The FMCSA doesn’t track how many safety certificates are issued by licensed repair shops.
The whistleblower suspects from his own observations in the Toronto area that they number in the hundreds — just from Ontario. Yet, he wondered whether the equipment ever even visited ATG Repair. He tracked the application of the safety stickers to a yard at 2315 Loreland Ave., in Mississauga, Ont., and had the private investigator stake out the location.
Video obtained by the private investigator reveals an individual appearing to remove and affix stickers to older power units and trailers and handing expectant drivers pink slips denoting a flawless inspection. All this in a yard that doesn’t house a repair shop and is not a registered DriveON inspection center.
Trucknews.com confirmed this by calling DriveON’s Vehicle Inspection Center assistance line and providing the address of the yard.
The investigator, meanwhile, did not observe any inspections taking place at the address where the stickers and inspection reports were being doled out.
When asked if he witnessed any inspection activity during his surveillance, the investigator told trucknews.com: “No, I did not see any inspections being conducted at the time the subject/suspect applied the stickers. He simply spoke with the truck drivers, prepared some paperwork, applied the stickers and gave the paperwork to the drivers and they left the area in the trucks. I had been conducting surveillance on those trucks before the suspect even arrived, so I know there was no inspections done at that time.”
The “suspect” who affixed the stickers is believed to be a licensed 310T mechanic in Ontario.
Shouldn’t DriveON have prevented this?
Last year, Ontario modernized and digitized its annual commercial vehicle inspection program, dubbing it DriveON. Approved inspection facilities were provided with tablets that were to be used to photograph parts and diligently document the inspection process.
As recently as July, the Ontario Trucking Association warned that the industry wasn’t prepared for the Aug. 1 rollout.
“As the Aug. 1 date approaches, there have been questions from industry about the readiness of the program and their ability to meet the new requirements,” the association said in a July release.
“We’ve been really waiting for DriveON implementation because we knew that it would eliminate all the fraud that’s been happening,” the shop owner told me.
We were able to identify the VIN on two units with the ATG inspection stickers. We entered them into the DriveON portal but no inspection histories were found. If not in the DriveON system, those vehicles should not be able to renew their plates, raising further questions about how the units are able to remain on the road.
Enforcement reaction
Convinced he had uncovered a fraudulent scheme that was keeping unsafe trucks and trailers on Ontario roads, the shop owner expected a swift reaction from the enforcement agencies that oversee truck safety in Ontario and the U.S. But so far, nothing has been done about it, to his knowledge.
Trucknews.com asked the shop owner why he believes this to be the case, despite supplied evidence that unsafe vehicles are being certified and allowed to operate on public roads.
“It’s like playing ping pong,” he suggested, noting every department he has contacted has referred him to another. “Everyone is really busy right now and I totally understand that might be a reason. Another reason might be, maybe it’s not monitored. They are not willing to investigate for some reason. No one just wants to do anything.”
In an email to Ontario Transport Minister Prabmeet Sarkaria and related MTO officials, the shop owner wrote: “I have video evidence clearly showing this individual applying a U.S.-issued inspection sticker to a Canadian commercial vehicle in Mississauga just one week ago. I also have information about the origin of the stickers and how this operation began. Also, I can provide a list of local companies that utilize his services, posing a huge risk to their drivers and the public.”
An Aug. 20 follow-up went unanswered.
The consequences
A source worries road safety is being compromised by the fraudulent issuing of FMCSA safety certificates, and those concerns are not unfounded. Trucknews.com learned of a mechanical breakdown this month in New York State involving a Canada-based trailer adorned with an ATG Repair inspection sticker.
Sources tell trucknews.com the trucking company owner called the Ontario mechanic who issued the sticker at the Loreland Avenue yard for advice. We’re told the mechanic traveled to the U.S. and conducted a quick fix, however, when it arrived at the Canadian border, the visibly damaged unit was pulled over by Niagara Regional Police and placed out of service. Trucknews.com obtained photos (below) of the affected trailer.
We also obtained the out-of-service report. The inspecting officer listed a litany of defects, including “driver’s [side] inner tire has steel cords exposed…bottom flange on frame at axle five cracked…axle five air bag deflated…axle five has no wheels, chained up to extensive frame damage.”
The most recent annual inspection done on the trailer, according to the ATG inspection decal attached to it, was in May 2025.
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