Inside a Tokyo Delivery Driver's Day Sort, Wash, Breathalyser, Walk

In central Tokyo a parcel driver walks about 14 kilometres a day and drives 13; the truck is where the parcels wait. Place: Tokyo, Japan, a Sagawa Express sales office and the streets around it Crew: one sales driver; Sagawa listed 425 sales offices in 2015 Rotation: one daily round of morning drops, afternoon pickups and a desk at the end; clock times are not on record Distance from help: the branch you left that morning; 13 km of truck and 14 km on foot on Sagawa's test day The day starts at the branch, where one sorter says around 2,000 parcels pass through in a day. The van is washed on a schedule down to the gap under the driver's seat. Roll-call comes next, with the alcohol check that has been required for commercial trucking since April 2011. Then the cart: about 70 morning drops, then roughly 20 pickups and 150 packages after a packed bento lunch. The daily report and the cash deposit close it. Japan's cap of 960 overtime hours a year for truck drivers, in force since April 2024, is why the industry is being rebuilt around this person. On this shift: Tanaka Shota, sales driver — his first look at the load: "Is this really the amount delivered in one day...?" (translated; Sagawa Express recruiting interview). On this shift: Yorimitsu Mai, sales driver — "The time when you get used to it is dangerous" (translated; Sagawa Express recruiting interview). On this shift: Kato Manami, branch sorter — "Mistakes are never allowed" (translated; Sagawa Express partner interview). The ledger: sleep not on record · pay: no Sagawa figure, all truck drivers about ¥4.5m a year (AFP, 2023) · food: a bento packed at home · distance: 19,252 steps, about 14 km on foot Read the record: Sagawa Express — recruiting interviews, career 02 and 04, partner 01-04 (sagawa-exp.co.jp/recruit) Sagawa Express — columns on the pedometer test (6 Feb 2025), van washing (5 Mar 2025), cart delivery (26 Jun 2025), uniform and lunch (10 and 24 Apr 2026) (sagawa-exp.co.jp/about-csr/column) PRESIDENT WOMAN Online — Sagawa "male culture" reform, part 1 (President Inc., 2016) Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism — FY2023 door-to-door parcel survey (MLIT, 2024) Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism — 2010 revision of the motor transport rules, alcohol detectors AFP via Malay Mail — Japan truck driver shortage (7 Apr 2023) Japan Trucking Association / MLIT study group — 960-hour overtime cap, April 2024 Chapters 0:00 Tanaka Shota Facing One Day's Parcels 2:18 Tokyo Commute Forty-Five Minutes Each Way 5:41 Washing Schedule for Sagawa Vans 7:58 Does Every Carrier Do It 10:38 Takahashi's Cart Round in Nihonbashi 12:24 What the Drivers Like Most 14:37 Floating Lunch Hour 18:34 Heading Back to the Yard 21:11 After the Drawer Closes