This paper analyses the detailed movement behaviour of freight vehicles using GPS-based probe data obtained from the Fifth Urban Freight Survey in Tokyo Metropolitan Area in 2014. In particular we focus on their frequent use of the roads along with residential areas, which is regarded as one of the serious freight traffic problem in Tokyo Metropolitan Area. Firstly, we analyse the characteristics of the freight vehicles such the road usage, the distance travelled and time-of-day pattern of use of the residential roads. It is found that there might be two possible reasons that freight vehicles, particularly large-sized ones, tend to use the residential roads: mixed land use and congestion of other competitive arterial roads. Afterwards, we take two areas as the case study of these two reasons with more detailed microscopic investigations. We confirm that the freight vehicles would take the residential roads mainly because of mixed land use and congestion in these case studies.