Business Email
Why recruiting@ at your own domain matters more than the website itself for a carrier.
Read about business email
Hosting by industry
Web Hosting for Trucking Companies
Most trucking companies think of the website as something shippers look at. Watch the traffic for a month and a different picture shows up. The busiest form on the site is the driver application, and that application is not an enquiry. It is a record full of details you would not want loose in an inbox, which is the real test of web hosting for trucking companies.
The driver application is the busiest thing on the site
A trucking website has two audiences and they want completely different things. Shippers want to know what you haul, where you run and whether you are properly authorised. Drivers want to know what the equipment is, what the pay looks like, how you get home, and how to apply without a phone call.
The second group is larger and they arrive more often. Recruiting is close to permanent in this industry, which means the site is doing recruiting work every week whether or not you designed it that way. If your careers page is a phone number and the word "inquire", you are asking the busiest visitor on your site to do the hardest thing.
So the practical question is not whether your homepage looks good on a laptop. It is what happens after somebody taps Apply on a phone at a truck stop, and where that information lands.
What a driver is doing when they apply
- On a phone, almost always. Design the form for a thumb, not for a mouse.
- On patchy signal. A form that loses everything when the page reloads gets abandoned once and never again.
- In pieces. Somebody starts an application, gets a load, comes back the next day. Long forms with no way to save lose those people.
- Comparing you against four other carriers with the same page open. Whoever is easier to apply to wins the first conversation.
None of that is a hosting feature. It is a decision about how the form is built. But hosting is where the result of that decision lands, and that is the part almost nobody plans for.
Make the Apply button survive a truck stop
If your careers page is still a phone number, we will build a driver application that works on a phone with patchy signal, and put it on your own domain. Call 716-771-2536 and tell us what the site runs on.
An application is a record, not an email
Here is the failure that shows up on nearly every trucking site we look at. The application form is wired to send an email. Applications arrive in somebody's inbox with a licence number, a date of birth, an employment history, sometimes medical card details and a signature line. They sit there. They get forwarded. Somebody replies from a phone and the thread ends up in three mailboxes.
Two things are wrong with that, and only one of them is about privacy.
The privacy part
Email between servers is not a secure filing cabinet, and an inbox is not access-controlled in any meaningful way once the message has been forwarded twice. A driver's licence number and personal history are exactly the sort of thing you do not want scattered across mailboxes that nobody can audit. At minimum, the page the form sits on should be served over a valid SSL certificate, and the mailbox that receives it should be a real business mailbox on your own domain rather than a free personal account somebody set up years ago.
The recordkeeping part
This is the one that bites later. Driver qualification paperwork carries retention obligations, and applications you did not hire from are part of that conversation too. We are not going to quote a rule number at you, and you should confirm the specifics with your own safety consultant or attorney, because the details depend on what you run and where. The general shape of the problem is simple enough: if somebody asks you for an orderly record of who applied and when, an inbox is not an answer.
The cheap fix is to log every submission somewhere structured as well as emailing it, so the email is a notification and not the only copy. Then the record survives a deleted message, a staff change, or a mailbox that fills up.
If you use a driver applicant tracking system already, the right move is usually to send the form straight into it and let the website hand off. What you want to avoid is the middle state where the website is the system of record by accident.
DOT and MC numbers, and the things people verify
Both of your audiences check the same handful of facts, and both check them before they contact you. Make those facts easy to find as ordinary text on the page.
- Your legal company name, the one on your authority, not only the trading name on the truck.
- Your DOT number and, if you have one, your MC number. Drivers look you up before applying. Brokers and shippers look you up before booking.
- What you actually run. Dry van, reefer, flatbed, tank, heavy haul. Be specific, because vague equipment lists read as a broker pretending to be a carrier.
- Your lanes and terminals. A driver in Erie County wants to know whether this is regional work or 3,000 miles a week.
- A real phone number and a physical address. This is a business where people still call.
Put those in text on the page, not inside a graphic. If your DOT number only appears in a logo image, it is invisible to search and cannot be copied into a lookup tool. That single habit costs more trucking sites more enquiries than any hosting decision ever will.
What web hosting for trucking companies really has to do
Less than you would expect. A carrier website is a modest number of pages that change slowly, plus one form that matters. It is not a heavy thing to host, and shared hosting is the right product for the overwhelming majority of fleets.
The parts worth spending attention on are not on the plan comparison chart. They are these.
-
Put the form on your own domain
If applications go through a third-party page under somebody else's branding, the driver notices, and you lose the ability to change anything about the experience. Embedding a system on your own page is fine. Sending people away to a page that does not look like you is where applications leak.
-
Make the receiving mailbox a business mailbox
recruiting@yourcompany.com, on your own domain, with more than one person able to see it. A personal free address is the single most common reason an application never gets answered. If your email is still on a consumer account, moving it is a small job and the business email page explains what it involves.
-
Keep a second copy of every submission
A database table, a spreadsheet, a folder of files, or your applicant tracking system. Anything that is not only an email. Then confirm your website backups actually cover it, because backups that skip the database skip your applications too.
-
Test the form from a phone every few months
Forms break quietly. A plugin update, a changed mail setting, a full mailbox, and submissions stop arriving with no error message anywhere. Send yourself one from a phone on cellular data and see if it lands.
That last one is worth putting in somebody's calendar. We have seen carriers lose weeks of applications and only find out when a driver phoned to ask why nobody called back.
Stop applications living in one inbox
We will trace your form from the Apply button to the mailbox, move it onto a business address at your own domain, and log every submission so a deleted email is not a lost driver. If it is already right, we will say so.
Who should not buy a recruiting site
An owner-operator running one truck on contract does not need any of this, and it is worth being blunt about that before somebody sells you a website you will never log into.
If you are leased on to a carrier, your loads come through a dispatcher, and you are not hiring anybody, the website is not doing recruiting work and there is no application to protect. What you need is a domain, a professional email address at it, and one page that says who you are with your DOT number on it. That is a very small purchase.
- You do not need a plan sized for traffic you do not have. An entry shared plan runs a five-page site comfortably.
- You do not need a careers section with no jobs in it. An empty jobs page reads worse than no jobs page.
- You do not need a load board, a tracking portal, or a customer login. Those are fleet features with fleet maintenance attached.
- You do very much need the email address to be yours, because that is what follows you if you change carriers. If you only have a domain and an inbox, the domains page is where to start.
Spending more starts to make sense at the point where you are hiring continuously, running your own authority, or handling anything on the site that a customer logs into. A fleet with a driver portal, a rate quote form and a shipper login is a different animal from a brochure site, and it deserves the attention that comes with website security being somebody's actual job.
Volume of trucks by itself is not the reason. Plenty of fifty-truck fleets are perfectly well served by a small plan, because the site is still five pages and a form.
How AldoMedia helps
AldoMedia has built and looked after websites for Western New York businesses since 1999, and carrier sites where the application form quietly stopped delivering are familiar work. We are an independent authorised reseller rather than the operator of the underlying platform, and if the plan you are already paying for is the right one, we will tell you that instead of selling you a bigger one.
If you inherited a site and nobody knows where the application emails go, that is a solvable afternoon. The taking over a website page covers what to collect first. Call 716-771-2536 or tell us what your site runs on.
Common questions
Trucking website questions
Where should driver applications go if not to an inbox?
Somewhere structured, with the email kept as a notification rather than the only copy. That can be a database on the site, an export you can download, or your existing driver applicant tracking system with the website handing straight off to it. The point is that a licence number and an employment history should not exist only as a forwarded message, and that you can produce an orderly list of who applied and when without searching a mailbox.
How long do I need to keep applications from drivers I did not hire?
There are retention obligations attached to driver qualification paperwork, and applications you turned down are part of that discussion. The specifics depend on what you run and how you are authorised, so confirm them with your own safety consultant or attorney rather than with a hosting company. What we can tell you is the practical consequence: whatever the answer turns out to be, a personal inbox is a poor place to satisfy it.
Should our DOT and MC numbers be on the website?
Yes, as plain text on the page rather than inside a logo image. Drivers look carriers up before they apply and brokers look you up before they book. If the number is trapped in a graphic it cannot be copied into a lookup tool and it does not appear in search results, which quietly costs you enquiries from both audiences.
Our application form stopped sending and nobody noticed. How does that happen?
Usually a mail setting changed, a plugin updated, or the receiving mailbox filled up. Forms fail silently, so the driver sees a thank you page and you see nothing at all. Send yourself a test submission from a phone on cellular data every couple of months, and keep a second copy of every submission on the site so that even a broken mail path does not lose the applicant.
Do we need a big hosting plan for a fleet website?
Rarely. A carrier site is a handful of pages that change slowly plus one form, and an entry shared plan handles that without complaint. The number of trucks you run does not change the load on the server. What does justify more is a shipper login, a tracking portal or a driver portal on the site, because those bring maintenance and security work with them.
We are an owner-operator leased to a carrier. Do we need a website at all?
Not much of one. If your loads come through a dispatcher and you are not hiring, a domain, a professional email address at that domain, and one page with your name and DOT number on it covers you. The email address is the part worth owning, because it follows you if you change carriers. Skip the careers section entirely rather than publishing an empty one.
Related
Website Backups
Backups that skip the database skip your driver applications with it. What to check.
How backups should workShared Hosting
The plan type nearly every fleet website belongs on, and what the tiers really change.
Read about shared hostingEvery trade we cover is listed on hosting by industry.
Hero image: Christopher Boswell, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. Cropped.
Find out where your applications are going
Tell us what your trucking site runs on and we will trace the application form from the Apply button to the mailbox. If everything is already set up properly, we will say so.
Get Your Web Hosting Plan Get help choosing
Or call 716-771-2536 and tell us what the site has to do. If the plan you are already on is the right one, we will say so.