This is one of the two or three questions we are asked most often, and the answer disappoints people, so it is worth giving properly rather than quickly. Left-hand-drive kei trucks are not a variant you choose between. They are an anomaly. Out of 949 vehicles currently on our lot, left-hand-drive examples can be counted on one hand — as this is written, there is exactly one.
Why they are all right-hand drive
The kei class is not a size of truck. It is a Japanese tax and regulatory category, defined by Japanese law, with limits on length, width, height and engine displacement that exist to earn the vehicle cheaper tax, cheaper insurance and in many places an exemption from proving you own a parking space. It is a category that only makes sense inside Japan.
So these trucks were built for Japan, where traffic drives on the left and the wheel goes on the right. There was never a left-hand-drive production run waiting to be found, because there was no left-hand-drive market for a Japanese-market tax class. And the route by which they reach the United States — a used vehicle 25 years old or more, imported out of the Japanese domestic fleet — guarantees you get exactly the truck Japan built.
The export models are a different vehicle
This trips people up constantly, so it deserves its own heading. Search for a left-hand-drive Suzuki Carry or Daihatsu Hijet and you will find them, in Europe and across Asia, built and sold in left-hand drive for decades.
Those are not kei trucks. To sell these platforms outside Japan, the manufacturers widened the bodies and fitted larger engines — because a 660cc, 4ft 11in-wide truck built to a Japanese tax limit makes no sense in a market with no such limit. The result shares a name and a silhouette with the kei version and is a measurably different vehicle underneath.
Two practical consequences. They are not what Japanese exporters sell into the US import stream, so finding one listed in Europe does not help you buy one here. And if you did import one, you would be buying a vehicle with different parts, different dimensions and a different spares situation from every other kei truck in the country.
What a conversion actually involves
People reasonably assume moving the steering wheel is a job. It is closer to rebuilding the front half of the vehicle. A real conversion touches:
- The steering column, rack and linkage, which have to be relocated and re-engineered rather than simply mirrored
- The pedal box and master cylinders, with new mounting points and new brake and clutch runs
- The dashboard and instrument binnacle, which on a cab-over is tightly packaged around the engine bay and the bulkhead
- The entire wiring harness, which is cut to length for one layout
- Heater and demister ducting, which is asymmetric and routed for the original side
- The wiper mechanism, which sweeps a pattern designed around where the driver's eyes are
- Usually cutting and rewelding the bulkhead, which is structural
On a vehicle in this price band, the labour alone routinely costs more than the truck. That is the whole reason conversions are rare: the economics never work. And a conversion done badly is worse than no conversion — it is a structural and safety question, not a cosmetic one, and it will follow the vehicle through every future sale.
If you are offered a converted truck, ask who did it, ask to see the bulkhead and the pedal box, and treat vague answers as the answer. We would rather talk you out of a bad conversion than sell you one.
Is right-hand drive actually a problem?
Here is the part worth hearing, because it changes most people's minds. Driving from the right is a smaller adjustment than it sounds, and for the work most of these trucks do it is sometimes an advantage.
Where it helps
Everything on the kerb side comes to you. Roadside mailboxes, gate latches, parking meters, bin collection, kerbside maintenance, inspecting a verge, talking to someone on the sidewalk — all of it happens at your window instead of across the cab. This is not theoretical: the Postal Service has run right-hand-drive delivery vehicles for decades for exactly this reason, and rural mail carriers buy right-hand-drive vehicles deliberately. If your truck works a property, a yard, a campus or a route, right-hand drive is a feature.
Where it costs you
Three things, honestly:
Overtaking on two-lane roads is the real one. Sitting on the right, you cannot see past the vehicle in front to judge an oncoming lane. There is no trick that fixes this; you either wait for a clear stretch or you do not pass. In practice a kei truck is slow enough that you spend very little time wanting to overtake anything, which takes most of the sting out of it — but it is a genuine limitation, not one to wave away.
Drive-throughs and drive-up windows are awkward. You will reach across, or get out, or stop using them. Toll booths matter much less than they used to now that most are automated or transponder-based.
Parking and lane positioning feel wrong for a little while. You sit closer to the kerb than your instincts expect and further from the centre line. Most people stop noticing within the first few days of regular driving — it is a recalibration rather than a skill.
What helps
A good convex mirror on the left, a deliberate habit of leaving more following distance so you can see around the vehicle ahead, and choosing roads where overtaking is not the point. None of this costs anything meaningful. All of it is more effective than a conversion.
The legal question, which is a different question
People sometimes assume right-hand drive is what stops a kei truck being registered. It usually is not. Right-hand drive is not in itself prohibited; right-hand-drive vehicles are driven legally in the United States every day.
What varies is whether your state will register a kei truck at all — and that is a judgement about the vehicle class, its federal exemption and its road suitability, not about which side the wheel is on. Importing a kei truck 25 years old or more is legal at the federal level everywhere in the United States. Road registration is decided state by state, and several states refuse it, including New York, where we are based. Converting a truck to left-hand drive would not change that answer in a state that says no.
Before you buy, read our state-by-state guide and ask your own DMV. That is the question that determines what you can do with the truck. The steering wheel is not.
So what should you do?
If you want a kei truck, buy a right-hand-drive one, which is to say buy a kei truck. Drive it for a fortnight and the question will have answered itself. The trucks are small, slow, superbly visible out of, and used overwhelmingly for jobs where sitting on the right helps more than it hurts.
If left-hand drive is genuinely non-negotiable for you — a commercial route, a specific accessibility need, a rule imposed by someone else — then be honest with yourself that you are looking for something that rarely exists, and consider whether a different class of vehicle serves you better than waiting for a converted kei truck to appear and paying the premium when it does. We would rather say that than string you along.
And if you want us to flag it when a left-hand-drive example does come through, say so and we will. Get in touch, or browse the kei truck inventory and the Daihatsu Hijet listings. Everything we sell arrives on free insured door-to-door delivery anywhere in the continental USA. If you are still choosing a platform, the four-way model comparison is the place to start.