CJ Logistics opened extra night shifts at its Mapo and Songpa hubs in Seoul on Wednesday as families drove back from hometown visits, unloading a wave of return gifts, online orders, and marketplace returns that managers said arrived faster than last Chuseok.
What the hubs are seeing
Operations staff told Yonhap that inbound scans at the two Seoul gateways climbed through Tuesday evening as the statutory holiday ended and offices prepared to reopen Thursday. Gift sets, dried seafood, and small appliances dominated the mix, along with a thicker layer of e-commerce parcels that had been held at regional depots while couriers prioritized Chuseok deliveries.
The company said it staggered feeder-truck arrivals from Gyeonggi and Incheon to keep belt lines from jamming, but several team leaders reported that late-night arrivals still stacked pallets three high near induction stations. Temporary staff hired for the peak were reassigned from day shifts to backfill sorters who had worked through the holiday window.
Expressway return traffic
Korea Expressway Corporation data showed the heaviest south-to-north flows on the Gyeongbu and Jungbu lines between 4 p.m. and 10 p.m. Tuesday, when rainfall in parts of Chungcheong slowed average speeds below 60 kilometers per hour. CJ’s dispatch center said several feeder trucks missed scheduled dock slots at Mapo, forcing night managers to hold trailers in a perimeter lot until belt capacity opened.
Retailers that had promised “Chuseok-plus-one” delivery windows began releasing held inventory into the network at the same time, compounding pressure on the Seoul hubs that act as the last sort before neighborhood routes. A logistics analyst quoted in the Korea Herald noted that marketplace sellers often trigger return labels once recipients fly back to the capital, which can double scan volume within 48 hours of a long weekend.
What CJ says it changed
In a notice posted to its newsroom page, CJ Logistics said it extended automated sort hours, added mobile induction units at Songpa, and kept customer-service lines staffed until midnight for merchants asking about delayed handoffs. The statement did not provide a firm backlog count but said “same-week delivery” remained the target for most domestic lanes if pickups were completed by Thursday afternoon.
Union representatives at a Mapo subcontractor told reporters they were monitoring overtime caps and break rotations as night shifts stretched past ten hours. CJ said it would publish a post-holiday operations summary once regional depots finish clearing held freight, likely by the weekend.
Implications for sellers and shoppers
Small businesses that rely on CJ’s B2B contract rates said the crunch is less about price than predictability: delayed induction shows up as missed same-day cutoffs on marketplaces that penalize late shipments. Consumers waiting on returns may see tracking pages stall at “arrived at hub” even when trucks are on site, because scans sometimes batch after pallets clear security checks.
For Seoul residents, the practical signal is audible as much as digital—more diesel rigs idling near hub fences after midnight, and more apartment security desks signing for bulky boxes before the workweek restarts. CJ executives said they would keep the augmented night roster through Sunday if return volumes stay above the September average, then scale back once expressway patterns normalize.
Capacity planning beyond the holiday
Corporate planners are comparing this year’s return curve to 2025, when a late heat wave kept families on the coast an extra day and stretched the backlog into the following Monday. CJ’s investor relations team told the Korea Herald that capital spending on automated sort lines in Incheon remains on schedule, but holiday staffing costs will appear in third-quarter logistics margin commentary.
Merchants weighing contract renewals said they want clearer scan timestamps when trucks sit outside hubs, arguing that marketplace algorithms punish sellers for delays outside their control. CJ responded that it is testing gate-level RFID pings at Mapo to close that visibility gap before the year-end shopping peak.