Category: News

2023 marks the 20th year that Jon Upton has been selling Year of Manufacture licence plates in Ontario. Jon is the proprietor behind this business: He paints the plates, designs the web site, answers the mail, buys the supplies, and does the accounting. Occasionally, he writes articles about himself in the third-person.

The first pair of Ontario plates that Jon sold specifically for Year of Manufacture registration was a mint pair of 1969 plates, back on September 3, 2003. Back then, no one knew about the YOM program, so business was very slow. Jon sold YOM pairs from his long-standing hobby website, The Back Bumper. There were no online pictures at first—just a list of plate years and numbers. As business picked up, Jon added images to the website, and made additions to the YOM stock more frequently.

Eventually, competitors surfaced, and it made sense for Jon to give his YOM sales a brand of its own. “OntarioPlates” wasn’t available as a web domain, and it was too long of a name. So Jon chose the domain “Ontplates,” registered his business under the name Ontplates.com, and weirdly started referring to himself as “we,” so he could say things like “We at Ontplates.com believe in client satisfaction.” Jon—the guy typing these words—takes a lot of care to project professionalism through this small business.

Jon set out to design a memorable logo for Ontplates.com. He didn’t want to hire an art company; doing so would cost as much as a year’s business revenue. He went without a logo for a few months (above) while creating and rejecting a few self-made drafts (below):

Eventually, he settled on a blue rectangle. It made sense, since Ontplates.com would sell many blue rectangles over the years. Jon learned how to use WordPress, built a unified website, and unveiled the new brand in late 2013.

Operating costs have ballooned over the past couple of years, but Ontplates.com is still chugging along at its ideal pace. As businesses go, we’re really the smallest of the small. Jon is our only employee; he’s a CEO who also has to sweep the floor. He paints in the summer when the shop is warm enough, and he stops in the winter when it’s too cold. There’s no doubt that our seasonal nature puts the brakes on the volume of business we can conduct. But if we were any more busy, we’d have to hire more employees!

Here’s to twenty years of proud service to classic car owners of Ontario!

The Ontario government has announced that there will be no further licence plate renewal fees for a number of different vehicle types, effective March 13, 2022. It took a week’s worth of asking for us to confirm whether that policy extends to YOM-plated vehicles. No one at the Ministry of Transportation or ServiceOntario seemed to know. But we finally received an answer from the Ministry of Government and Consumer Services: Yes, it does.

This means that YOM-plated vehicles no longer have to pay $120 annually through ServiceOntario to have plates renewed. Vehicle owners will still have to renew their plates each year; it simply won’t cost anything. Furthermore, there will be no more validation stickers for YOM-plated vehicles, as well as most other vehicle types (which unfortunately renders our now-former YOMtab product obsolete).

The new policy also affects users of restricted-use Historic Vehicle plates, which were renewed annually for $18. Historic Vehicle plates were a popular choice because they cost $102 less to validate each year over YOM licence plates. With the fees for both being axed, we are hopeful that there may be an uptick in YOM registrations.

But before we rejoice, we should also be aware: While other jurisdictions (for example, Alberta and Yukon) are doing away with validation stickers, it is a puzzling move for Ontario to discontinue their plate renewal fee structure. With over 8 million vehicles affected at $120 per year, that works out to a billion dollars of annual revenue that the province will no longer be collecting. Provincial spending has risen overall through the pandemic, and the government still needs this revenue. It remains to be seen exactly how the current government will proceed if it is re-elected, or whether this decision may be reversed by another elected party. Another shoe may still drop from somewhere.

Ontplates.com, like any other business, is faced with rising costs. We have maintained steady prices for the past 6-7 years. However, some of our operating costs have jumped recently, and we’re wrestling with that age-old question: Do we raise our prices overall?

There’s a lot more going on behind the scenes here than most people realize. For example, our web hosting costs have gone up. We now subscribe to additional web security services in order to protect our site from spam-based attacks. This protection prevents spammers from sneaking off-topic text into our site (usually about pharmaceuticals, from what we’ve seen). It also gives us a better view of our incoming mail, so we can sort real customer messages from spam. The free Google ReCapcha function is terrible at doing this; we missed many customer emails last year that were false-positives for spam. So we now pay a couple hundred more per year, to keep the site running properly in this spammy world.

As fuel prices rise, so do many costs that we typically absorb. Shipping is a big one: We have always offered free shipping to our customers, because they appreciate the “what-you-see is what-you-get” aspect of our pricing. We absorb these costs by choice. Yes, they reduce the taxable income of our bottom line, but the more we pay to Canada Post, the less remains in the modest coffers of our business. We used to be able to ship most any pair of plates throughout Ontario for $14. Now, it’s $16 or $17.

The costs for our supplies are also on the rise. It costs us more now to acquire the special primer that we need to prep plates before painting them. We go through a lot of primer in order to restore our plates; we have to buy it by the case. As fuel prices rise, so too to prices for paint, solvents, plate-sized poly bags, and even our shipping supplies.

Ontplates.com is a niche business, with a tightly-focused target clientele. We sell between 100 and 130 YOM items annually, on average. We’re not a high-volume business. We do pay income tax on our revenues after deducting legitimate business expenses. At the end of the year, the business turns a modest profit, but it’s certainly not lucrative enough to give up any day-job! 

We have advertised for many years in the Old Autos newspaper out of Bothwell, Ontario. The annual fee we pay for our ads has not increased in the last few years. No doubt, Old Autos is experiencing a rise in their operating costs, yet they have not seen fit to pass those increases along. We admire that, and are thankful.

We have chosen not to apply pricing-structure increases at present. However, the time may eventually come when we’ll have to revisit the matter. We’re hoping that $1.60 gasoline is a prediction for the distant future!

Thank you for reading. Happy motoring!

YOM license plates make a great Christmas gift—as long as the recipient knows the tasks and costs involved to have them registered to be street-legal in Ontario. We recommend discussing the idea with your loved one first.

We will never sell plates to a client without first clearly stating those costs. We don’t want our customers to be blindsided, so we will always take the time to inform first, and make a sale second. Above all else, we want you to be glad that you chose Ontplates.com, even if you decide that YOM license plates maybe aren’t what you’re looking for. If you would like to know more about any aspect of the YOM program, please contact us!

We ship via Expresspost, which will get your plates to you, tracked, in two business days on average… Plenty of time to wrap them and put them under the tree!

So, what will it cost to register YOM licence plates in Ontario? You can find pretty much any answer in our comprehensive FAQ section. Here are a couple of common ones that we hear during the lead-up to Christmas:

Summer is here! The Ontplates paint shop is in full swing, cranking out restored pairs of plates as consistently as possible. Over the course of the pandemic, our usual sources of plates—from which we buy raw, restorable stock—have not been readily available, due to event cancellations and business closures. Ontplates.com does have a reserve of raw restorable stock, thanks to our purchases over prior years. But as that stockpile is slowly used, we’ll begin to run low on a few of the years that we typically have in stock (we’re already low on 1951 and 1955). So we’re looking to buy!

Follow us for new arrivals

We always encourage visitors to contact us when their favourite year is out-of-stock. After all, we may have something coming down the pipe! The best way to stay informed is to follow us on Twitter or Facebook. We post links to every new arrival as it becomes available. We have plenty upcoming for the summer.

We Buy Plates

We do buy pairs of plates on a continual basis: Either one or a few pairs at a time, larger batches, or even entire collections. If you’ve been sitting on some old plates, or know someone who is, please get in touch. We can work magic on a lot of the rusty stuff that comes from old barns and garages.

Restoration Options

This might be a good time to mention that we’re not “for-hire” to restore other people’s plates. We have a system in place where the majority of our restorable stock goes through several stages. Some plates end up waiting a while before moving to the next stage. If we’re busy priming and sanding, other plates that are in another stage will be placed on the back-burner. It can sometimes take more than a year for a pair to go through our queue. It depends on how difficult it is to strip the old paint, how many holes must be filled, how much priming is needed, and even the colour of the paint needed. If you need a pair of plates restored, see our below for some options (all of which are based in the USA).

Finish Your Plates
www.finishyourplates.com

Lee Lawson (ALPCA member 10161)
leelawson1374@att.net
(501) 628-4535

Tag Doctor
tagdr.com

Vintage Plate Restoration
www.vintageplaterestoration.com