Asia Logistics Wrap: Japan Logistics Report 1

It seems appropriate that I post my first "Japan Logistics Report" this evening as today's Logistics Japan newspaper provides a summary of the trucking logistics market across the country for the month of January. This is a regular thing for the newspaper, and so I plan to bring the survey results to this blog for public consumption. The newspaper is in Japanese, so this English translation should be an added bonus.

Overall, the tons transported by 32 regularly surveyed special package hauling firms was down 98.8% of 2006 and breaks a streak of year-on-year monthly gains since May 2006. As for standard haul trucking, it was up from last year at 101.9%. More specifically, the Tokyo and Nagoya areas were down at around 98.0% while Okinawa and the Osaka regions were both over 115%.

Focusing on Tokyo, because that is where I am, the decrease was driven by reduced hauling of metal products, machines, foods, and daily goods. Next month and beyond is expected to see flat movement.

On the air cargo side, domestic (3.3%) and international lanes (2.6%) were both up over 2006 for January. Overall, the value of exports by air was up 16.5% and imports up 10.6% over January 2006. For sea freight, the value of exports was up 20.1% and imports 10.2% over 2006. Domestic rail freight was down across car and container types.

In the future, I will be pulling from a range of articles published in Logistics Japan for this report, which I intend to do on a weekly basis except for holidays. Each day will cover a different region of Asia, except for Friday when I focus on the topics of resilience and globalization.