Motorcycle couriers fear rules block them from mail market (Japan)

Motorcycle couriers are considering offering express mail services in limited areas to take advantage of a bill before the Diet that would allow private companies to offer postal services under certain circumstances.

The best chance they have of qualifying, however, is to guarantee that they can deliver mail entrusted to them within three hours-a condition that some in the industry say would be difficult to meet.

Currently, motorcycle couriers are barred from handling mail. Instead, they specialize in the rapid pickup and delivery of small parcels and nonmail like catalogs.

Grabbing a share of the express mail business would allow these firms to increase the volume of material they handle. But like their counterparts at some parcel delivery firms, executives at courier companies have argued that the demands the government plans to place on new entrants into the postal services market are too onerous, effectively preventing them from capturing a slice of a potentially lucrative market.

The Public Management, Home Affairs, Posts and Telecommunications Ministry plans to give up its own money-losing courier service, which would virtually hand the niche market for motorcycle-based mail delivery to private firms.

The ministry launched its motorcycle courier service in 1997 in an unsuccessful bid to counter competition from private couriers.

Three major motorcycle couriers-Sokuhai Co., Baikukyubin Co. and Saroute-are all eyeing the new business, as it would boost their market.

Akio Kimura, president of industry leader Sokuhai, said that requiring the delivery of express mail within three hours is a fatal flaw in the deregulation bill, which would oblige prospective market entrants to meet at least one of three criteria to qualify for a license.

The company originally planned to provide an express mail service in limited areas by installing mailboxes so that people could drop off mail and have it delivered within five hours for about 100 yen per item within Tokyo’s 23 wards.

“We have been telling the ministry that delivering express mail within the 23 wards takes at least four to five hours,” Kimura said. “By setting the three-hour rule, the government seems to want to stop the private sector from breaking into the business throughout the capital.”

Kimura said Sokuhai is now reconsidering its strategy, adding that the proposed restrictions would force it to limit its client base to corporate customers alone or its service area to just five or so wards in central Tokyo.

Kimura estimates that if the express mail business was fully liberalized, it could open a new market worth as much as 80 billion yen in Tokyo alone