Japan Railways Group companies have begun expanding cargo transportation services using their fleet of shinkansen.
Fresh food and other items are loaded into vacant space on shinkansen train cars and transported from production areas to large markets and other required locations.
The JR firms use the punctuality of their shinkansen operations to leverage such operations. These transportation services are set to further expand just as Japan is facing the so-called 2024 problem, the name used to describe disruptions to logistics services that stem from an overtime cap for truck drivers introduced in April.