Signing up as a carrier

The carrier access path to Truckscanner is a direct registration: no application, no review wait, but a 5-step form that captures the operational data needed for automatic load matching (VAT number, transportable goods, vehicles with dimensions and payload, covered geographic areas, user account). Once you verify your email you enter the real carrier dashboard and start the documentary onboarding to receive loads from the network.

Before you start: what you'll need

A handful of real fields — the form is built to profile your fleet so that automatic matching only proposes loads that fit your trucks. Have these handy:

• Your company VAT number (Italian or foreign) and country code.
• The official legal name and the registered office address (if the VAT is Italian, the system fetches both automatically from public registries).
• The list of goods types you can transport, including any ADR certifications (dangerous goods) and ATP (perishable / cold-chain).
• For each vehicle in the fleet: licence plate, category (Truck, Tractor, Trailer), vehicle type, engine type (Diesel, Electric, Hybrid, etc.), trailer type, cargo box dimensions (length, depth, height in meters) and payload capacity in kg.
• The geographic areas where you operate — selectable at country or single-region level.
• A business email and a password at least 8 characters long to access the platform.

Time to fill: 8-15 minutes, depending on how many vehicles you add. It's worth keeping the vehicle registration certificates next to you while filling in the "Vehicles" step so the payload numbers are correct.

Step 0 — Company data

Open /register and click the "Sign up" button on the right card "Carriers and owner-operators" — see Getting started for the CTA map. You land on a page with the 5-step bar at the top: Company · Goods · Vehicles · Zones · Account. You're on the first step.

What you do, in order:

1. Check the progress bar at the top (callout 1 in the screenshot): five numbered steps. You're on step 1 of 5 — the others aren't navigable yet.
2. Pick the country of your VAT from the dropdown (default "IT - Italy"). The country drives the format validation and points the lookup at the right public registry.
3. Type the VAT or tax code in the next field (callout 2, placeholder "e.g. 01234567890"). For Italian VATs we query the VIES registry (the EU public database for VAT validation) and the chambers-of-commerce registries to fetch legal name and address. On a match you see a confirmation "Data pre-filled from official registries" under the field and the fields below populate themselves; otherwise the message "Not found in registries." appears with a "Fill in manually" button to unlock the fields.
4. Fill or confirm "Legal name" (e.g. Trasporti Rossi SRL) and "Registered office address" using the magnifier-icon autocomplete. If Google autocomplete returns nothing, the system falls back to manual fields (Address / City / Province / ZIP).
5. Click "NEXT" at the bottom right (callout 3). If a required field is missing or invalid, red error messages appear and the page auto-scrolls to the first error.

Step 1 — Transportable goods

After clicking "NEXT", the progress bar advances to step 2 "Goods". You see the title "Transportable goods" with the subtitle "Select the goods types you can transport." and a grid of four boxes grouped by type.

The four boxes, in order:

1. "Generic goods" — pallets, cases, sacks, coils, etc. The widest category, covering everything that doesn't require special certification.
2. "ADR dangerous goods" (callout 1) — recognisable by the yellow triangle icon. ADR is the Accord Dangerous Roads, the European convention regulating the road transport of dangerous goods (fuels, gases, chemicals, explosives, flammables). Selecting even one ADR item means declaring that you hold staff training certificates and vehicle homologation — you'll have to upload the certificates in the document archive after registration, otherwise the network will not send ADR loads to your company.
3. "ATP perishable goods" (callout 2) — recognisable by the blue snowflake icon. ATP is the Accord Transport Périssables, the international convention regulating the transport of perishable goods (fresh food, frozen, pharmaceuticals) in the cold chain. Selecting ATP items implies that you have refrigerated/isothermal-homologated vehicles — you'll also have to upload the vehicle's ATP certificate after registration.
4. "Other" — special categories that don't fit ADR/ATP: waste (WASTE), high-value goods (HIGH_VALUE), dry food not in the cold chain (FOOD).

What you do:

• Tick items individually in the boxes you care about by clicking the checkbox or the goods name, or click the "Select all" link (callout 3) at the top of each box to tick everything in that group. When the whole group is selected the link becomes "Deselect all".
• There's no minimum (you can click "NEXT" with nothing selected), but a fleet declaring zero goods types receives no loads: in practice select at least the goods types compatible with your vehicles.
• When you're done, click "NEXT" at the bottom right.

Step 2 — Fleet vehicles

Step 3 "Vehicles" is where the form collects the most technical info: the matching system uses precisely these numbers (vehicle category, cargo dimensions, payload, trailer type) to decide which loads to propose. It's worth filling it with the vehicle registration certificates next to you.

The form starts with one vehicle already open ("Vehicle 1"). The fields, in order, for each vehicle:

• "Category" (callout 1, required): pick one of three from the dropdown — "Truck" (a complete truck, engine + cargo body together, code TRUCK), "Tractor" (motor unit without cargo body, code TRACTOR), "Trailer" (cargo body only, code TRAILER). The choice changes which fields appear below.
• "Plate" (callout 2, required): write the plate without spaces. The field auto-uppercases (aa000bb becomes AA000BB) and validates.
• "Vehicle name (optional)": an internal nickname (e.g. Big blue truck). If you leave it blank we use the plate ("If empty, we'll use the plate").
• "Vehicle type" (callout 3, required for Truck/Tractor, NOT visible for Trailer): the list comes from the backend (rigid frames, articulated frames, curtain-side bodies, etc.). With more than 8 options a search field "Search vehicle type..." appears.
• "Trailer type" (required for all three categories): the list is also fetched from the backend (curtain-side, reefer, tanker, container, tipper, etc.). Search appears here too with many options.
• "Engine type" (optional, NOT visible for Trailer): pick from "Diesel", "Electric", "Hybrid", "Methane (CNG)", "LNG", "LPG". It helps matching for clients with sustainability constraints.
• "Length (m)", "Depth (m)", "Height (m)" of the cargo box (required, NOT visible for Tractor): decimal values with comma or dot (e.g. 13.6, 2.45, 2.70). The system accepts both separators and normalises to dot.
• "Payload (kg)" (required, NOT visible for Tractor): the payload capacity, not the gross vehicle weight. It's the net transportable weight from the registration certificate. Example for a standard truck: 24000 (24 tonnes).

To add a second vehicle click the "Add vehicle" button at the top right of the step. To remove one, click the × icon next to the "Vehicle N" title (visible only when more than one vehicle is in the list). When all vehicles are filled, click "NEXT".

Step 3 — Covered areas

Step 4 "Zones" asks where you operate. The title is "Covered areas" with the subtitle "Select the countries or individual regions where you operate. You'll be able to change them later.".

What you'll find:

• A search bar at the top (callout 1) with placeholder "Search country or region..." — handy to filter quickly across large continents without scrolling.
• Continent tabs (callout 2): "Europe", "Asia", "Americas", "Africa", "Middle East", "Oceania". The default tab is "Europe". Each tab has a "Select all" link above it that ticks all countries in the continent in one click (and becomes "Deselect all" when they all are).
• A country grid (callout 3) below the tabs. Each country is a row with: a main checkbox to select the whole country, and — if the country has a region list in the database — a small › chevron to expand and show the individual regions (e.g. "Lombardy", "Veneto", "Bayern", "Île-de-France") each with its own checkbox.

Selection logic, important:

• Whole-country selection: tick the country checkbox — you cover the entire national territory.
• Mixed selection: instead of selecting the whole country, click the chevron and tick some regions. The country stays unticked but you see a counter (N/M) next to the name (e.g. "Italy (3/20)" if you ticked 3 regions out of 20). The system saves only the regions actually ticked, not the whole country.
• Country auto-promotion: if you tick region by region until they're all selected, the country auto-promotes to "whole country" — more efficient on the matching side.

When you're done, you see a small counter at the bottom (e.g. "5 selections") and you can click "NEXT".

Step 4 — Account and consents

The last step "Account" collects the data of the contact who'll be the company admin on the platform. The title is "Your account" with the subtitle "These details will be used to log into the platform.".

What you fill, in order:

1. "First name" and "Last name" of the contact (callout 1). These identify you as the company admin in the platform and in our communications.
2. "Phone": country prefix selector (default +39) plus the number. We use it for urgent operational notifications (e.g. last-minute changes on a load in progress) and tech support, not for marketing spam.
3. "Email" (placeholder "email@company.com"): must be reachable right away, because at the end of the form we send the verification email and without it you can't log into the dashboard.
4. "Password" (placeholder "Min. 8 characters") and "Confirm password" (placeholder "Repeat the password"): they must match and be at least 8 characters. You'll see the red message "Passwords don't match" or "The password must be at least 8 characters" if you slip.
5. Consents (callout 2):
   • Tick "I accept the Terms and Conditions" — link opens the Iubenda PDF in a new tab.
   • Tick "I accept the Privacy Policy" (idem).
   • Both are required. Forgetting one shows the red messages "You must accept the Terms" / "You must accept the Privacy Policy" and the submit is blocked.
6. Click the final CTA button "SIGN UP" at the bottom right (callout 3). While the system processes, the button becomes "Signing up..." with a spinner.

What happens after clicking "SIGN UP"

In sequence, within seconds:

1. Green confirmation toast at the top right: "Registration complete!".
2. Backend account creation: your company is created with status PENDING (waiting for documentary onboarding completion), your user is created as admin of that company.
3. Verification email sent to the address you entered. Notification catalog:
4. Automatic redirect to the "Check your inbox" page (URL /verify-email), with text like "We sent a verification email to mario.rossi@trasporti.it. Click the link in the email to activate your account." — the address is the one you entered. For full email-step detail see Getting started with Truckscanner — «What happens after submitting» section.

After email verification: real dashboard + documentary onboarding

Once you click the link in the verification email you land on the confirmation page with the message "Email verified!". For carriers the page shows the "GO TO DASHBOARD" button — not "GO TO DEMO" like for WAITLISTED forwarders: click and you go straight into the real carrier dashboard. That's the key difference between the carrier and forwarder paths.

From here task #1 is completing the documentary onboarding: uploading the chambers-of-commerce extracts, the carrier liability insurance policies, the transport-operator registry enrolments, and — if you declared ADR/ATP at step 1 — the staff training certificates and the vehicle homologation certificates. It's in the company "Documents" page. A dedicated guide to documentary onboarding will follow.

Common problems and how to report them

Coming soon

See also

• Getting started with Truckscanner — the map of the two paths (forwarder vs carrier) before choosing which form to open.
• Applying as a freight forwarder — the parallel path for those who organise transports for clients, useful to read if you find yourself on the wrong form.