Disclosure: this page contains referral links, marked where they appear. Every default figure below comes from measurements published on this site.
Most kei truck cost calculators guess at the vehicle price. This one starts from a number I measure: the median asking price of every 25-year-eligible truck listed in Japan, counted on August 19, 2026 and published in full. Change any assumption and the total updates.
| Truck | — |
| Exporter / agent fee | — |
| Ocean freight | — |
| US duty | — |
| MPF (0.3464%, min $33.58, max $651.50) | — |
| HMF (0.125%) | — |
| Customs broker + port handling | — |
| Inland transport | — |
| Landed total | — |
What This Does Not Include
Three costs sit outside the calculation because they depend on where you live, and quoting a national average for them would be guessing:
- Title, registration and sales tax. Set by your state and county. Check your own DMV — and check first whether your state registers kei trucks at all, because 13 states have no road-use pathway. The 50-state guide has the current position with statute numbers.
- Insurance. Most owners report $200–400 a year, but the spread by state and insurer is wide.
- Arrival maintenance. Budget $300–800. Assume the timing belt is due unless paperwork proves otherwise — the maintenance guide explains what each engine family needs.
The Assumptions, and Where They Come From
- Vehicle prices — medians from a complete count of every 25-year-eligible listing on Carsensor, Japan’s largest marketplace, measured August 19, 2026. De-duplicated by listing ID. Raw data here.
- Duty — the 25% chicken tax applies to vehicles classified as cargo trucks (HTS 8704) and carries no age exemption. A vehicle entered as a passenger vehicle (HTS 8703) faces 2.5%. Classification belongs to Customs and your broker, not to you; budget at 25% and treat anything less as upside.
- MPF and HMF — FY2026 rates, effective October 1, 2025. Several other calculators still use the older FY2025 figures.
- Duty base — calculated on the vehicle price. Some guides add freight to the dutiable value; that overstates the bill.
- Freight and fees — mid-range of the 2026 quotes described in the cost guide.
Once the number looks workable, the next step is seeing what is actually listed. CAR FROM JAPAN publishes the inspector’s auction sheet with each vehicle, which is the document that tells you what you are really bidding on, and my referral code takes $100 off a first purchase — enter KEITRUCK at the order step (referral link).
Want to sanity-check the output? A buyer on r/keitruck posted his own receipts recently: a $1,290 truck, $4,016 all in. Run those numbers through the calculator and it returns $4,548 — about $500 high, because his agent fee and freight both came in under my mid-range assumptions. Two things worth taking from that. The duty line matched his to the dollar ($323), which is the part most calculators get wrong by adding freight to the dutiable value. And a real quote can beat a mid-range estimate by several hundred dollars, so treat this total as a planning figure rather than a price.