used for normal parcels,” Mr. Tominaga continues. “Yet when it approached these companies about chilled transport, they declined the opportunity.” Mrs. Tominaga accepted. And this is where Yano and Minsei Diesel entered the picture. Fukuokaunyu needed a refrigerated box and a truck capable of carrying it. Mr. Tominaga suggests that, as fellow Fukuoka business owners, his grandmother and Yano founder Koichi Yano made natural allies. They agreed to tackle the project together, with Mr. Yano’s firm taking charge of the refrigeration system. Minsei Diesel, meanwhile, was able to provide 7.5- to 8-ton trucks, which Mr. Tominaga notes were large for the time. The stakes were high for everyone involved. “If they failed in building the truck,” Mr. Tominaga stresses, “Fukuokaunyu could have gone out of business. Someone at Minsei Diesel said to our company, ‘This could be suicide for both of us.’” That concern was not enough to stop the trio from pressing ahead with a process that resembled assembling a puzzle—without being quite sure what it was supposed to look like. The refrigeration compressor proved the most vexing. “You would think,” Mr. Tominaga says, “that if the US had compressors, it would have simply been a matter of importing them. Things were not so straightforward back then.” By late 1958, they had created a
refrigerated truck, but they had not yet ironed out all the compressor issues. “Finally, they found a solution,” Mr. Tominaga says. “They managed to acquire old US military compressors.” They had been uncertain about what they should do, but then received a helping hand from the US military. The US forces had a number of old refrigeration units destined for scrap, but kindly gave Fukuokaunyu one compressor that was still useable. The compressor was not the only roadblock. Another was the Transport Bureau’s reluctance to register the MinseiYano refrigerated trucks, which were anything but standard. Yet Mrs. Tominaga managed to persuade the bureau, and Fukuokaunyu Reefer Service—a name suggested by a US commander—was born. Soon, the Japanese government would embrace chilled transport wholeheartedly. In 1965, the Science and Technology Agency announced its intention to promote the cold chain. By 1967, the Reefer Service had a fleet of 120 trucks. “This technology drastically changed the economy,” Mr. Tominaga says. “The combination of cold transport and the spread of home refrigerators definitely
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changed the food business and the Japanese diet.” Call it a kitchen revolution. Fast-forward to the present day, and Fukuokaunyu not only offers refrigerated service, it specializes in it. Using a proprietary computer system at bases dotted around the country, the firm can deliver everything from food to medical supplies, maintained at precise temperature zones. “It’s not all about the technology,” Mr. Tominaga stresses. “It’s how you use it. Say you’re delivering a box. It’s no good if the box is damaged, even if what’s inside is fine. That has nothing to do with temperature, but I think this illustrates the Japanese approach to transport.”
“I believe Shizu’s gut instinct told her this would benefit Japanese society“ Taisuke Tominaga
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Fukuokaunyu is now in the process of building up its collection of UD trucks, with 28 currently on the road. Just as the companies are bound together by history, they’re heading into the future together. The transporter and the truck maker further cemented their bond in the run-up to Fukuokaunyu’s 50th anniversary in 2006, when UD Trucks was still Nissan Diesel. “To celebrate the big milestone, we asked Nissan Diesel to rebuild one of the original refrigerated trucks,” Mr. Tominaga says. The first step was to find a Minsei T80 chassis. “Even if Nissan Diesel found one, there was no guarantee the owner would sell it,” he recalls. “The first one they found, the owner refused to part with it, since it’s a collector’s item. The second one would have been too hard to restore.” Nissan Diesel searched for about a year before hitting the jackpot in Hiroshima.