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Protestors closed off the Loferer highway in western Austria near the German border at 10:30 am (0830) GMT and were planning to do the same with the nearby Fern pass in the Tirol mountains in the afternoon, the local news agency APA reported.
They were trying to "send a clear Easter warning" to politicians that new restrictions on heavy truck traffic were needed, said Fritz Gurgiser, a spokesman for the Austrian Transport Forum in the Tirol.
Gurgiser said nitrogen oxide emisions in the western region were 30 percent higher than the levels allowed under the 1991 Alpine Convention.
Austria, a major transit zone between northern and southern Europe, fears that foreign trucks are causing permanent harm to its ecologically sensitive mountain areas and that traffic would increase once 10 mostly central European nations join the EU on May 1.
The country sought to reduce traffic through the Austrian Alps by means of a system of toll charges, and with the help of increased motorway police checks.
But an EU decision which took effect on January 1 eliminated some of the restrictions on heavy goods traffic that Austria negotiated when it joined the 15-state bloc in 1995.
The European Commission ruled in December that Austria cannot impose a limit on the number of low-pollution trucks using its roads and has since warned that the government could face legal action if it refuses to implement the decision.
The blockade began on Monday when 300 protestors blocked traffic on the A10 highway, which runs from Germany to Slovenia, creating a three-kilometre-long (two-mile-long) queue of trucks outside Salzburg.
It was due to continue until Wednesday and also affect Lower Austria province, neighbouring Vienna and the southern Carinthia province.
The protest has the support of Transport Minister Hubert Gorbach, a member of the far-right Freedom Party, who has rejected the EU's decision.
A recent study found that truck traffic had increased by 2.2 percent in the first months of 2004 compared to the same period last year.
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