Logistics automation: bookings, carrier ledgers, wait times

Trucking and warehouse paperwork grows with every shipper and subcontractor

Trucks carry 91.7% of Japan’s domestic freight by tonnage (fiscal 2023). Japan has 62,848 trucking companies (March 2024), and over 99% of general freight carriers are small or medium-sized businesses.

Since April 2024, truck drivers’ overtime has been capped at 960 hours a year, even under special circumstances. To keep drivers’ hours from being lost to waiting and loading, new duties for shippers and logistics companies took effect in April 2025 and April 2026.

Trucking and warehouse paperwork is made of exchanges with shippers, warehouses, and subcontractors. In a 2023 government survey, 70% of trucking companies said they use other trucking companies as subcontractors. Carriers that actually drive the loads said that even with a master contract, individual requests come by fax or email.

Work	What stays manual	What already exists
Taking transport requests	Reading requests that arrive by fax or email and copying them into the dispatch sheet	Products that read delivery request forms with generative AI and turn them into CSV
Truck booking	Entering each trip in each shipper’s or warehouse’s booking system	Products that register bookings automatically from the same vendor’s dispatch system
Actual-carrier ledger	Collecting the actual carrier’s details from subcontractors and recording them for each job	A feature that collects actual-carrier details through a QR code on the request form, and apps that build the ledger
Waiting and handling records	Picking times out of driver logs and digital tachograph records and totaling them per shipper or site	Arrival and check-in records in truck booking systems
Shipping labels	Fitting order data to each carrier’s import format	Yamato Transport, Sagawa Express, and Japan Post label systems import CSV or Excel and print labels in bulk
Freight billing and payment	Matching invoices against actual jobs, including waiting and ancillary charges	Products that match invoices against payment data with AI

Dedicated products are growing. In 2026, Hacobu launched MOVO Adapter, which reads delivery request forms with generative AI, and MOVO Billing, which matches invoices against planned payment data with AI. Yamato Transport’s B2 Cloud imports up to 1,000 labels at a time from Excel or CSV. What stays manual is the entry and matching that span systems and formats that differ by counterparty.

Each shipper and warehouse books trucks in a different system

The government lists truck booking systems (systems where carriers reserve an arrival slot at a loading dock) as one way to cut waiting time. Yet in its fiscal 2025 survey, only 17% of warehouse operators had a dock booking system, and 53% arranged arrival times by other means. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism (MLIT) notes that measures needing capital investment, such as dock booking systems, remain at a low rate of adoption.

The more these systems spread, the more work falls on carriers. Hacobell, which provides a truck booking system, names as a problem that carriers end up making bookings in several truck booking systems, and says each system’s input format differs, forcing tedious work on them.

In February 2025, Hacobell and TSUNAGUTE added links to each other’s booking systems. In July 2025, Hacobell also began registering trip requests made in its own dispatch system into its own booking system automatically. When a shipper’s or warehouse’s booking system comes from the same vendor as your dispatch system, links like these are enough. When it does not, someone still opens each booking system and enters each trip.

Since April 2025, every job leaves more records behind

Japan’s revised Motor Truck Transportation Business Act took effect on April 1, 2025. MLIT explains that layered subcontracting and transport contracts made by word of mouth had been major obstacles to carriers receiving fair fares and charges.

• Written transport terms: when a shipper and a trucking company make a transport contract, each gives the other a document stating the transport and its price, any loading or ancillary work and its price, and charges such as fuel surcharges. Email is allowed if the other party agrees, and copies are kept for one year. MLIT states that a transport request made only by phone violates the duty to provide written terms
• Actual-carrier ledger: a prime contractor that uses another company to carry a shipper’s load of 1.5 tons or more records, for each job, the actual carrier’s name, the goods and route, and its tier in the subcontracting chain, and keeps the record for one year. Subcontractors must notify the prime contractor of the actual carrier’s details
• Driver logs: the duty to record waiting of 30 minutes or more caused by the shipper, among other items, now covers all trucks, not just those of 8 tons gross weight and similar

From April 2026, freight forwarders that arrange trucking also must provide written terms, and keep the actual-carrier ledger when they act as prime contractor.

Charges written down become the basis for billing. In the 2023 survey, written contracts often left out ancillary work charges and fuel surcharges, and about half of companies said they had done ancillary work not in the contract. The standard freight rates revised in March 2024 set levels for loading and unloading charges on top of waiting charges, and add 50% when waiting and handling together exceed two hours. MLIT says recording waiting and handling times gives carriers the basis to collect waiting, loading, and unloading charges from shippers. Finding unbilled waiting and handling charges is covered in Bill waiting time and loading charges per shipper.

Tools for the actual-carrier ledger have appeared as well. In February 2025, Hacobu added a feature to MOVO Vista that registers the actual carrier’s name and tier through a QR code on the delivery request form. In February 2026, the Japanese company LOGITECH launched an app that builds ledger data from dispatch messages, replacing the truck number notices that used to go by phone or email. When subcontractors don’t use such tools, someone still matches details arriving by email or phone against the dispatch sheet.

Waiting and handling times are now measured and reported to the government

Under Japan’s revised Logistics Efficiency Act, all shippers and logistics companies have since April 2025 had a duty to make efforts to load trucks more efficiently and to cut drivers’ waiting and handling times. Since April 2026, companies above a certain size are designated as specified businesses and must submit medium- to long-term plans and periodic reports. Designated shippers must also appoint a chief logistics officer (CLO).

As of August 27, 2026, the designations covered 3,257 shippers and franchise chains (2,142 companies after removing duplicates), 877 trucking companies, and 56 warehouse operators. The first plans are due at the end of October 2026, and the first periodic reports at the end of July 2027.

Designated shippers and warehouse operators include measured waiting and handling times in their periodic reports. For warehouse operators, that means monthly averages for each site measured. If measuring everything is hard, they may sample at least five consecutive business days each quarter. The listed measurement methods include arrival display devices and other systems, reception logs, staff assigned to record times, and information from truck drivers.

Counterparties ask for the records too. MLIT’s guide for warehouse operators notes that shippers may ask them to measure and provide waiting and handling times broken out for that shipper. For carriers, MLIT expects that shippers who cannot track waiting and handling times will check with the trucking company.

In MLIT’s fiscal 2025 survey, a truck driver’s average working span per trip was 10 hours 13 minutes, of which waiting and handling took 2 hours 2 minutes, down 1 hour 16 minutes from the previous year. The government’s target is two hours or less of waiting and handling per trip. Even so, companies reported sites where drivers still wait more than five hours.

What to check before automating

• Each system’s terms of use: whether you may operate a shipper’s or warehouse’s truck booking system automatically depends on its terms and your agreements with them. Check the terms before you automate a website explains how
• Whether a dedicated product or link is enough: if your dispatch and booking systems come from the same vendor, they may link automatically. Dedicated products also exist for reading request forms, for the actual-carrier ledger, and for invoice matching. If they cover what you need, consider them first
• How time is counted: waiting time runs from arrival at the pickup or delivery site to the start of handling, counting only waiting caused by the shipper or site. Settle each shipper’s and site’s counting rules, such as how to exclude waiting the carrier caused, before automating
• Who decides: staff check and decide the charges in written terms, what goes in the ledger, the figures reported to the government, and what to bill shippers. People also judge whether the result meets the law
• Drivers’ personal information: decide how drivers’ names and phone numbers for bookings arrive from subcontractors, and where they may be entered

What Kitewell does

Descarty’s Kitewell is integration and automation middleware that connects systems through APIs, files, databases, and screens.

• Operates booking and shipper systems: AI reads and operates web systems and desktop apps that have no API. Operations that worked are remembered and repeated the same way on later runs
• Keeps going when screens change: when a remembered operation no longer fits the screen, AI reads the screen again, does the step, and remembers the new operation. If it still can’t proceed, the run stops, and AI looks into the cause and suggests the fix
• Runs trip by trip from the dispatch sheet: register an Excel list such as the dispatch sheet as a batch sheet, and it runs row by row and writes results such as booking numbers back to each row
• Reads notices that arrive by email: it checks Gmail, Microsoft 365, or IMAP mail at set intervals and saves attachments. AI steps read notices and request forms in PDFs and images
• Handles sign-in hurdles: passwords are referenced by name and typed in without showing the value to the AI. When a one-time password is required, the run pauses until staff enter it
• People check where it matters: approval can be set on any step, such as before booking or before a record is finalized. Requests reach Slack, Microsoft Teams, and email, and sending one back restarts the run from the step you choose
• Every operation on record: each run keeps its logs, screenshots of the screens it filled in, and approval decisions
• Alerts when it stops: failures are sent to Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, and more

You can start from one piece of work, such as taking a delivery request through booking trucks on shipper and warehouse sites and recording it in the dispatch sheet. A demo shows how it runs, a free connection test confirms Kitewell reaches your systems, and a one-month PoC measures the result against success criteria agreed up front, before you license it for production. See From evaluation to production for details.

Sources

• Japan Trucking Association: Japan’s trucking industry: current state and issues 2025 (in Japanese)
• Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare: Working-hour standards for truck drivers (in Japanese)
• METI, MLIT, and MAFF: Survey of layered subcontracting in truck transport (April 27, 2023; in Japanese)
• LOGISTICS TODAY: Hacobu launches MOVO Adapter, an AI OCR for logistics (February 20, 2026; in Japanese)
• LOGISTICS TODAY: Hacobu supports freight rate management and invoice matching with AI (September 8, 2026; in Japanese)
• Yamato Transport B2 Cloud: Creating external data (in Japanese)
• Sagawa Express: e-Hiden III FAQ (in Japanese)
• Japan Post: Yu-Pack Print R (in Japanese)
• MLIT: Briefing on medium- to long-term plans under the Logistics Efficiency Act (September 2026; in Japanese)
• Hacobell: Hacobell and TSUNAGUTE link their truck booking systems (February 17, 2025; in Japanese)
• LOGISTICS TODAY: Hacobell links its truck booking system with its dispatch management (July 15, 2025; in Japanese)
• MLIT: The revised Motor Truck Transportation Business Act, in force April 1, 2025 (in Japanese) and Q&A on the revised act (as of March 31, 2026; in Japanese)
• MLIT: Recording of waiting and handling times in driver logs extended to all trucks (in Japanese)
• MLIT: The two acts on proper trucking (in Japanese)
• MLIT: New standard freight rates for trucks announced (March 22, 2024; in Japanese) and attachment (in Japanese)
• LNEWS: Hacobu collects actual-carrier details from a QR code on request forms (February 20, 2025; in Japanese)
• LNEWS: LOGITECH launches an app that helps build the actual-carrier ledger (February 4, 2026; in Japanese)
• MLIT: The Logistics Efficiency Act, for shippers and logistics companies (in Japanese)
• MLIT: Guide for specified warehouse operators under the Logistics Efficiency Act (February 2026; in Japanese)