Japan to face 36% truck driver shortfall in FY2030: study

Gotta start training those non-japanese imports then. Few japanese women have interest in doing this job.

OR, develop AI trucks overnight.

Just sayin.....

"It will be necessary to improve the efficiency of logistics in order to avoid serious economic effects," said Kazuyuki Kobayashi, the institute's logistics consulting group manager.

Most of the older retiring drivers started on a decent wage, years ago.

However, over the years those wages have remained stagnant, making driving an unattractive job at the present rates.

Basically, if you want drivers (Japanese or imported) you are going to have to raise wages. And this will mean and across the board increase in transport costs.

No other way out of this one.

Where’s the world’s smallest violin?

Pay proper wages, watch the so-called “shortage” vanish within a week.

There's far too many trucks on the road as it is. Freight should be moved by rail wherever possible.

The alternative is importing more cheap labour that drives even more dangerously than the locals do.

Probably be driverless by then anyway.

I wouldn't mind doing that part time and seeing the country.

Japan should build an extensive freight rail network like the US has done.

Import the Ukrainians!

Japan should build an extensive freight rail network like the US has done.

Why? The vast majority of freight in Japan moves along a single corridor on the Pacific coast that already has an extensive rail network. Freight trains run almost entirely on passenger line tracks because there is no space to build a seperate network for them.

And you know what they will do in the end instead of pay raises and constructive ways of getting more drivers? They'll end the curbs on overwork, or introduce something like "a limit on overwork to 200 hours a month".

Has anyone driven the Tokoku tollway between Nagoya and Tokyo after midnight. Try doing that in Medium Rigded truck and you soon realised it demands nerve of steel to put your life on the line doing that type of high stress in a high danger environment. The pay rate does not reflect the skills and dangerous conditions.

The alternative is importing more cheap labour that drives even more dangerously than the locals do.

Soon we'll see Vietnamesse truck driver on the street.

Wait another years, there will be accidents that involved those driver caused by excess illegal overtime that being forced by Japan Inc.

I wouldn't mind doing that part time and seeing the country.

It's difficult seeing the country at night time

"I wouldn't mind doing that part time and seeing the country."

Seeing the country becomes boring and monotonous after only a few hours, leaving you with stressful and tiring and dangerous work which is underappreciated and underpaid, as already mentioned...

Japan should build an extensive freight rail network like the US has done.

If you live near a railway line you'll see that there's a vast amount of freight moved by train in Japan.

There is no real "shortage" of truck drivers, as this article insinuates. If the transport companies raised their hourly rates of pay to, say, ¥2500/hr, these so-called unfilled jobs will be filled real fast.

Soon we'll see Vietnamesse truck driver on the street.

Nope. There is no need to import people from overseas to fill these jobs : 2030 is a very long time off - and self-driving trucks will be very common by then.

JeffLee -

Japan should build an extensive freight rail network like the US has done.

Make no mistake : Japan has an incredibly well developed and extensive rail freight system.

I agree with David Brent, truck driver wages are on the lower end. Unless you’re driving six days a week/ 12 hrs a day you’ll never make a living wage.

It's difficult seeing the country at night time

With all due respect I wouldn't drive all night, I would drive when I damn well feel like it because it would be part time and I don't need big money.

Um, Japan has an extensive rail system. Why not use that? Just use trucks for the last mile or so.

And sadly the problem has no known solution. If only there was some way to entice people to want to do the job! And they only have ten years, not nearly enough time to find one.

It calls for a govt. expert panel and a few years of discussion before kicking the can down the road to the next panel.

Tesla Semi may help alleviate that shortage.

What is the average hourly wage for a driver in Japan? The UK has suffered a shortage of drivers when we left the EU, we made so difficult for Europeans to work in the UK they all left and went back to Poland or xyz, there still is a shortage but they have had to increase the wages as no one wanted to go through the expensive training, and the CPC test and medicals, as shop workers got about the same for filling supermarket shelves! The only way your going to get new drivers is to offer new drivers a good incentive like pay, working conditions, etc

Freight shinkansen. Even then, Japan is going to have to brace itself for serious inflation ahead that will wreck the economy, empty retail and may even undermine the LDP. Nothing erases a regime's support quite like a dose of prolonged inflation.

Pay proper wages, watch the so-called “shortage” vanish within a week.

Smart comment..

Keep going..

Seriously..

Rise the wages and problem solved..

Japan should build an extensive freight rail network like the US has done.

Japan has already one of the world's best rail networks..

US rail network is falling in pieces..

It’s a no-brainer. Use self driving trucks and drones. It lessens the issues of labor shortages, labor disputes, intoxicated drivers, and drivers falling asleep.

Make no mistake : Japan has an incredibly well developed and extensive rail freight system.   

Yet it cannot move a single international standard shipping container as there are no wagons capable of fitting them. Bit of a problem isn't it.

@fighto

make no mistake : Japan has an incredibly well developed and extensive rail freight system.

No it doesn't. Only about 5% of freight in Japan goes by rail. 90% by smoke belching trucks that clog the highways. In the US, nearly a third of freight is rail-bound.

there is concern that shorter working hours will translate into a drop in transport delivery capacity,

oh well.

Then you cheapskate companies better start offering more money/benefits then.

I wouldn't mind doing that part time and seeing the country.

Lol! At FedEx one of our sayings was "part time is full time and full time is all the time". Once the dispatcher gets you out the gate you have almost no control over quitting time unless you want to be fired.

With all due respect I wouldn't drive all night, I would drive when I damn well feel like it because it would be part time and I don't need big money.

You will load and unload at the appointment times set by your dispatcher. If you miss your appointment time you don't get to load or to unload. If it's a "hot load" you don't stop and take breaks, you drive straight through to make your delivery.

In the US, nearly a third of freight is rail-bound.

No. Not even close. What does get moved by rail more often than not either starts its journey on a truck or ends its journey on a truck.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/194750/value-of-us-domestic-shipments-by-transportation-mode-2040/

About 3.8% of US freight moves by rail.

This is a major issue going forward.

Self driving trucks won't be anywhere close to existence in 6 years - people are expecting robots to load and offload the goods too?

Sure some drones and automation will come into play but not fpr at least 15 years or more in any substantial way.

Rail isn't feasible for the whole country. Many areas don't have accesible rail, so need trucks at load and offloading points too.

If the freight supply doesn't move smoothly, bottle necks and shortages of products occur and rising prices will be the result. Especially in rural areas where the people can least afford it.

More labor is required for people to drive and load / unload the necessary trucks. More human drivers are essential.

Now.

Period.

More freight trains would be great, but I remember reading somewhere that the reason why there is so little freight trains is that the width of cargo containers is too wide for japanese rails, which are apparently narrower than European and American rails. More transportation by ship might be more feasible.

No it doesn't. Only about 5% of freight in Japan goes by rail. 90% by smoke belching trucks that clog the highways. In the US, nearly a third of freight is rail-bound.

There are a ton of factors that make the comparison to the US meaningless.

First, what is being shipped? US freight rail's biggest cargoes are raw materials (coal, lumber, etc) or agricultural products (wheat, corn, etc). This makes sense since these things are generally dug up or produced in large volumes in one part of the country and consumed in another.

Japan doesn't have a significant resource based economy like that. And production of its main agricultural product, rice, is dispersed throughout the country in small scale farms that doesn't lend itself to agglomeration in single collection points like in the US.

Second, you are wrong about 90% of freight being transported by trucks. Almost every Japanese city lies on the coast and a huge volume (40%) of domestic freight is transported by sea rather than land. This is also something quite different from the US where sea travel from say New York to LA involves a costly trip through the Panama Canal (sea based transport accounts for only 8% in the US).

Third, the geography is completely different. Freight shipments are often measured in thousands of kilometres in the US, but only hundreds in Japan. Since the actual end destination of products being shipped is almost never the rail terminal itself, they still have to be loaded onto trucks to be shipped locally. If you've got a 3,000km journey by rail followed by a 50km journey by truck then the vast majority is by rail. If you've got a 300km journey by rail followed by a 50km journey by truck, you are going to be dependent on trucks for a greater proportion of freight travel. This is Japan's situation.

Third, where is this rail network going to magically appear? There simply isn't any available land left on the Pacific corridor where most freight travel exists.

@grund, the UK gauge is almost identical to Japan's, so I can't see why a standard size container can't be transported on the Japanese railway system, I am sure that all containers are a standard width,

https://www.trackopedia.com/en/encyclopedia/railway-system/track-gauges

@rainyday

you are wrong about 90% of freight being transported by trucks.

That would make the Japan Trucking Assoc. wrong, LOL.

https://jta.or.jp/wp-content/themes/jta_theme/pdf/aboutjta2024eng.pdf

"Trucks carry more than 90% of cargo in Japan..."

I often comment on this topic because I once hosted a logistics forum in Tokyo and did a lot of homework beforehand, and tons of people like yourself are misinformed. A common complaint at the event was that Japan doesn't rely enough on rail. Some others remarked on how the US-Canada freight rail network is the world's best.

@grund, the UK gauge is almost identical to Japan's, so I can't see why a standard size container can't be transported on the Japanese railway system, I am sure that all containers are a standard width,

The standard rail gauge in both Japan and the US is 1,435 mm. Japan Rail carries container freight now on flat cars. They carry both a Japan only 12 foot long container and standard 40 footers.

That would make the Japan Trucking Assoc. wrong, LOL. 

https://jta.or.jp/wp-content/themes/jta_theme/pdf/aboutjta2024eng.pdf

Well, if you were to read past the first sentence of your own source you’d notice they actually list two ways of measuring it (graphs on the last page): tonnage and tonnage times distance travelled. Using the former you get roughly 90% for trucks, using the latter you get about 55%, with coastal shipping making up 44%. The latter seems a better way of measuring the overall reliance of the transport system on each mode to actually move stuff around.

I often comment on this topic because I once hosted a logistics forum in Tokyo and did a lot of homework beforehand, and tons of people like yourself are misinformed. A common complaint at the event was that Japan doesn't rely enough on rail. Some others remarked on how the US-Canada freight rail network is the world's best.

That is very nice, but you still haven’t actually addressed any of the points I raised or demonstrated that I am misinformed about anything.