Miyazaki Kotsu

I interviewed the cargo loading carried out at "Miyazaki Kotsu", based in Miyazaki Prefecture. This company’s efforts are carried out on the route connecting between Saito City and Nishimerason, Nobeoka City and Takachiho Town and the Hyuga City and Moroduka Village. This time, I surveyed the route connecting Nobeoka City to Takachiho Town.

This is a bus that carries out loading of passengers. Wrapping is given to the car body, we can distinguish at a glance. Note: There seems to be a vehicle distinguished by a small sticker sticker to the side without wrapping. This bus transports “Yamato Transport” home delivery. A part of the seat in the car was removed, and there was an enclosure to carry the load. In addition, there are refrigeration facilities, it seems that it corresponds also to cool flight. It is possible to deliver home delivery to municipalities in the morning during the day because the scope has been decided. When I interviewed the driver of the bus which had been stopped at the bus stop at Nobeoka station, there were only two passengers. Therefore, I felt that it is necessary to carry out a cargo-loading project on this bus which is difficult to maintain by only passenger transport.

Consideration

The route covered this time was difficult to maintain in the style of maintaining profitability only by transportation of passengers of the conventional bus company. As a result, I saw the success of expanding earnings due to loading of passengers. Besides Miyazaki Kotsu, many bus companies, especially local bus companies has a problem experiencing serious declines in revenues from passengers, passenger transportation, due to the declining population and popularization of private cars and the declining number of student users due to the declining birthrate and aging population. The decline in revenue of the bus company leads to the reduction of the number of unprofitable routes and the scale of operation, and the arrangement of unprofitable routes and the reduction of the scale of operation means the occurrence of "Transport Refugees" due to the remarkable deterioration of convenience.
In other words, I thought that such a bus company carries out loading of passengers and expanding profits, so that it could eventually lead to the maintenance of local public transportation. In addition, as mentioned above, since it also leads to the solution of the problem of "shortage of workers" occurring in the parcel delivery industry, the cargo loading can solve "generation of Transport refugees due to worsening of bus company profit" and "human labor shortage of transportation industry" at the same time.