  Junichi Nagai | Credit: IDN
By Taro Ichikawa
IDN-InDepth NewsFeature*
TOKYO (IDN) - Like the kangaroo pouch pocket that provides a place of shelter for the young after they are born, the truckers of Tokyo’s legendary Nagai Transportation Company move their cargo with great care. No surprise therefore that the kangaroo is the logo of the company that celebrates “60 years of good faith and gratitude”.
“What we receive is confidence, what we put on our truck is our gratitude (to clients) and what we transport is safety and future of the planet”, says Junichi Nagai, the eldest son of Kazumi Nagai who set up the company after World War II (1939-45) in Minato-ku, one of the 23 wards of Tokyo.
Minato district is in fact the origin of the truck industry after WWII along with Chiyoda and Chuo wards.
“As a former military officer, my father understood the importance of logistics and he chose to start a transportation company in the aftermath of the WWII,” says the elder Nagai. He currently heads Minato district branch – the largest branch of – the Tokyo Truck Association, which in turn is the largest division of the Japan Truck Association.
In his younger days, he participated in setting up the youth division within the Tokyo Truck Association and was its second chief in succession. “Now you will find youth divisions of the Truck Association in other prefectures, but it was the first of its kind. We engaged in various studies in relation to transportation and public safety as well as volunteer work.”
When a great earthquake hit the city of Kobe in 1995, Junichi Nagai mobilized the youth division led by him to drive transport emergency supplies – such as water, tents and other basic necessity goods – to the affected areas. Some 15 members drove back and forth five to six times.
To begin with, the enterprise headed by Kazumi Nagai handled goods that were popular with the ordinary people in the early post war reconstruction phase: chewing gum, liquors, and candies.
In 1953, he obtained a transportation license and established the Nagai Transportation Company (NTC) with three trucks. Four years later, the company began moving the Seikyo newspaper, one of the leading Japanese dailies. In 1961, NTC also began moving the Sports Nippon Newspaper, one of the country’s major daily sports newspapers.
A pair of cherry blossom trees named “Nagai Meoto Zakura (Nagai husband and wife cherry blossom trees)” have been planted at the headquarters of the Seikyo Newspaper, a longtime client of Nagai Transportation Company.
In 1969, the company – which now has 70 employees between 26 and 70 years, average age being 48 – was incorporated and Junichi Nagai, the current president, joined the company. “Since my father was president, it has been our policy to take care of all employees who have worked for us. All through 60 years, we have never fired any employees. And, if an employee is 70 and would like to continue to work, he can answer phones or do something he easily can.”
Though NTC does not have an employees’ union, in conformity with Japan’s labour laws, every year the management makes agreement with a representative of the majority of employees over working conditions and submits the relevant documents to the Labour Standards Inspection Office.
The work accord regulates, for example, cases where employees might be asked to work more that eight hours a day and on a holiday. “We take pride in our absolute compliance to laws, which is our company’s tradition,” says NTC president Nagai, “and inform our workers about the company’s financial situation at least twice a year.”
There is a legal system to protect the employees’ rights but to what extent a company translates it into practice is a different matter, says Hiroshi Nagai, NTC’s executive director. “In fact it is not common for a transport enterprise like ours to abide by the legal system both in letter and spirit. But we have realized for a long time a 40-hour, five day week.”
As part of corporate social responsibility, the Nagai Company also provides unemployment, health and workers’ compensation insurance, in addition to old age pension. In all this, as in Germany and most other European countries, the additional costs are borne 50-50 by the employer and employees.
Strict adherence to prevailing laws has qualified NTC for G-mark and Green Management Certification. The latter was established for the trucking business in October 2003.
Since 2003, the Japan Track Association has been evaluating and making public the safety record of trucking companies. This is intended not only to help make it easier for customers to choose companies with a better safety record, but also to raise awareness among all trucking companies of the need for improving safety.
The Nagais have been awarded both the G-Mark and Green Management Certifications, retaining it since 2003.
The Green Management Certification is issued by the Foundation for Promoting Personal Mobility and Ecological Transportation (abbreviated as ‘Eco-Mo Foundation’) to encourage people to drive with ecology in mind. Since 2003 it is being given to the transport enterprises such as truckers, and since 2005 to buses and taxies for implementing friendly to environment specific programmes.
After 50 years of establishment, Nagai Transportation Company’s high level of service of Safety and Reliability was recognized by the Eco-Mo Foundation.
A 2009 survey covering about 4,000 truck companies that are members of the Tokyo Truck Association and some 400 non-members revealed that that 28 percent of the truckers are not providing social or health insurance to employees. This enables them expand their profit margins – sometime with the connivance of employees who prefer to save their share of social insurance contributions, ignoring their long-term interests.
There are 63,122 truck companies in Japan – 55.4 percent own 10 or less trucks and 21.7 percent between 11 and 20. As of 2009, 11,276 truck companies (17.9 percent of the total) had been awarded G-mark.
While the elder Nagai is vice chairperson of the traffic safety association of Mita part of the Minato district, the younger Nagai engages in similar activities organizing traffic safety schools for children, distributing traffic safety brochures, and standing at traffic junctions with a flag for pedestrians.
Such volunteer activities fetch certificates of merits from police prefectures, each of these being counted as 2 points in G-mark appraisal. A truck company is required to obtain over 80 points to get a G-mark certificate and Nagai Transportation Company scores 90 to 92 points including two points which comes from certification of merit from police stations.
As in Europe, in addition to traffic safety, fuel efficiency and environmental protection linked to that are important issues. The Nagais attach great importance to fuel efficiency. Smart driving such as gentle acceleration and braking has helped improve fuel economy: now 8.3 kilometres per litre of fuel instead of 5 kilometres a litre is a significant advance.
Also, all company trucks are now equipped with an aircraft black box style “drive recorder” that collects data on accelerations, velocity, angular velocity, global position, avoidance manoeuvres of the driver and so on. Moreover, these recorders can record a video of the driver's view by means of a CCD camera. The drive-recorder was developed and validated by means of impact tests, driving tests and real crash tests. The drive-recorder is now available for use as an aid in precise accident reconstruction.
The Nagai Transportation Company underscored its commitment to Corporate Social Responsibility when it started working on green management in 1998 – a few months after the Kyoto Protocol to combat global warming was adopted in December 1997 at the United Nations climate change conference in the Japanese city of Kyoto.
Junichi Nagai recalls that this required a lot of persuasion of the company’s employees, and also some additional work for them and the management. While the drivers were required to record on paper their driving behaviour, the management evaluated the sheets, discussed the results recorded and worked on proposals to further improve.
Meanwhile, employees have got used to this extra effort, and realize how important their contribution is to reducing greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.
*This is the first in a series of special IDN features on ‘Corporate Social Responsibility: Transportation and Environment’. (IDN-InDepthNews/17.04.2010)
Copyright © 2010 IDN-InDepthNews | Analysis That Matters
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External links:
http://nagaiunso.com
http://www.jta.or.jp/english/truckingtodayandtomorrow.pdf
http://www.keishicho.metro.tokyo.jp/kotu/suisin/suisin.htm
http://www.jta.or.jp/english/index.html
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