Japan’s transport ministry is considering setting up relay logistics bases along expressways in the country to allow trailer trucks to exchange their cargoes with the aim of reducing truck drivers’ workloads, informed sources told Jiji Press. 

The initiative is also expected to be effective in lowering the risks of drivers getting infected with the new coronavirus as it can help shorten their travel distances and allow them to avoid visiting areas where the virus is spreading, the sources said.

The rear deck of a trailer truck can be separated from the tractor head. Trucks can exchange their cargoes by linking the separated rear decks to each other’s heads.

In 2018, Central Nippon Expressway Co., or Nexco Central, in cooperation with a logistics company, opened a relay logistics base called Connect Area Hamamatsu near the Hamamatsu Service Area on the Shin-Tomei Expressway in the central Japan prefecture of Shizuoka. 

For transporting a cargo from the Kansai western region to the Kanto eastern region, for example, the driver conventionally had to travel a distance of some 1,200 kilometers roundtrip, spending two to three days in total.

By utilizing the relay base to exchange cargoes with a driver from the Kanto region, the driver from the Kansai region can halve the travel distance to around 600 kilometers and complete the trip within a day.

A logistics industry group has requested that such relay bases be set up across the country.

With the demand for logistics growing amid the coronavirus pandemic, the transport ministry decided to have the Panel on Infrastructure Development, which advises the transport minister, consider ways to promote the establishment of relay logistics bases, believing that the initiative would lead to more efficient transportation and reduced workloads on drivers, according to the sources.

Specifically, the ministry is considering setting up relay bases as facilities attached to expressways, just like service areas and gas stations, so that drivers can use them without exiting the expressways.

JIJI Press