Some great advice from Hurryupandwait, when in Italy and heading towards the Blanc tunnel, lorries must stop before the tunnel , at the checkpoint, which is about 25 miles from the tunnel.
You only have to go in to an office and declare what emissions are for your truck , depending on it’s age, they give you a bit of paper to hand in on arrival at the tunnel.
If you go past the checkpoint, they’ll turn you around at the tunnel, I have seem many fly past the checkpoint, mainly Spanish fridge trucks .
Strict radar controls inside the Blanc and Frejus tunnels .When in France, heading towards the Frejus tunnel and carrying ADR loads , you must stop before the tunnel and declare your load contents to the fire brigade or pompiers , they may check all your ADR equipment, but that never happened to me .
They will take a long time to verify the load manifest to check the mixture of the load and the safety of it if there was a fire or accident in the tunnel .
In rural areas in Italy , some road signs are 20 years old and out of date , sending you on a wild goose chase , headlights on in the daylight is their law .
The only negative issue was lack of truck stops , they are mainly Tavernas or restaurants with adequate parking for lorries.
The closure times are very odd and early in the evening, the toll motorway food is amazing and very cheap , I had an Autogrill drivers discount card for about 20% off meals , they love Lavazza coffee ,so try a triple espresso for that one hit from Southern Italy to Calais .
I never had problems with the traffic police. If you can get to Brescia East truck stop , they have a fully equipped gym, a hotel with a drivers discount, and car hire to tour the lakes and visit George Clooney’s house .