As defense officials take steps to improve the shipments of troops’ belongings to a new duty station, they need to ensure that they include comprehensive feedback from troops and families about their household goods experience to inform future oversight, government auditors have recommended.
That was one of the key elements missing in the government’s implementation of the now-failed Global Household Goods contract, according to a report released Thursday by the Government Accountability Office.
U.S. Transportation Command officials lacked sufficient information about troops’ experiences with the contractor, HomeSafe Alliance, which limited TRANSCOM’s ability to assess the contractor’s performance, the report found.
TRANSCOM also had limited information about other key aspects, such as cost and HomeSafe’s mover capacity, needed to effectively manage the risks and oversee the contract, auditors stated.
GAO’s report comes nearly three months after DOD terminated the GHC contract and ceased awarding household goods shipments to HomeSafe, reverting to awarding all shipments through the legacy system
The contract, which could have been potentially worth up to $17.9 billion over nine years, essentially privatized the management of household goods shipments, but TRANSCOM was to continue to oversee the enterprise.
HomeSafe’s contract was terminated because it “failed in its execution of the contract, and that left military families stranded, confused and unsupported,” Army Maj. Gen. Lance Curtis, commander of a permanent change of station task force, previously told reporters.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth directed the creation of the task force in May, citing problems with troops’ household goods moves that were getting worse. The group includes more than 110 personnel from all military departments and the Coast Guard. The task force was required to submit long-term recommendations to Hegseth by Sept. 5; details about the status of the recommendations weren’t available at the time of this report’s publication.
As part of GAO’s congressionally mandated review of DOD’s management and oversight of the GHC, GAO auditors also conducted an open-ended online survey of service members and their spouses on their moving experiences with the GHC.
Among the 1,217 responses were descriptions of challenges with inadequate communication with HomeSafe’s customer service representatives about the status of their shipments, as well as delays in multiple phases of their moves. Some survey participants reported that they didn’t hear from the contractor to schedule or confirm pickup or delivery dates, or that the movers didn’t show up when expected.
There were also complaints about less funding for service members’ personally procured moves, previously known as do-it-yourself moves. The amount service members could recoup from those moves was tied to GHC rates paid to movers, which were lower than amounts paid under the legacy system.
RELATED
These issues exacerbated the financial problems many troops face when making a PCS move. One survey participant said they took on more than $10,000 in debt to do a personally procured move, specifically to ensure their household goods were moved, adding, “I could not afford to miss a pickup date.” Some service members said they were forced to spend extra money out of pocket to pay additional rent or to stay in a hotel, or that families had to stay in their new residence without their household goods while waiting for their shipment to be delivered.
TRANSCOM has long used customer satisfaction surveys to help rate moving companies in the legacy system, as well as to evaluate moves under GHC. Under GHC, service members were supposed to receive up to five separate surveys after each stage of their move. But, for example, if a service member’s belongings were never picked up under GHC, and transferred to the legacy system, they wouldn’t receive a survey for the GHC mover’s pickup services. Thus, not providing a survey to these service members who had experienced failures “limited TRANSCOM’s formal feedback on the full range of experiences with the GHC,” auditors stated.
In its response to GAO, DOD agreed with auditors’ recommendation that it needs to make sure it’s able to get comprehensive information needed on capacity, performance and costs.
The goal of GHC was to improve service members’ military moves and DOD’s ability to oversee and hold moving companies accountable. However, in this contract, TRANSCOM officials lacked the necessary information to effectively oversee the program, auditors found.
TRANSCOM officials told auditors that HomeSafe had claimed it had the capacity to manage about 200,000 shipments per year. However, HomeSafe was unable to successfully manage the roughly 20,000 shipments it had been assigned from April 2024 through June 2025. A major part of the problem was that moving companies refused to take shipments under GHC because the rates were lower than market rates under the legacy system, which had been running concurrently with GHC.
With the lack of accurate information about moving capacity, TRANSCOM ordered moves from HomeSafe that exceeded the contractor’s realistic capacity, causing negative impacts on military families, auditors said. They cited DOD’s data showing HomeSafe failed to meet key performance metrics from January through June 2025. HomeSafe picked up 64% of shipments on time and delivered 58% of shipments on time.
Compounding the problem for service members and families were challenges with quality assurance processes, auditors said. Five of the nine military joint personal property shipping offices GAO met with stated that they lacked the authority to provide real-time direction to correct errors or unsafe conditions, such as mishandling of household goods under GHC, unlike what they were able to do under the legacy system. They could only document and report quality issues to TRANSCOM for them to address with HomeSafe.
Those personal property offices also said there were challenges with data inconsistencies between the contractor and government IT systems. Scheduled packing and pickup dates sometimes differed between the IT systems, making it difficult for services to schedule quality assurance inspections.
TRANSCOM incurred higher costs than anticipated for the transition to the GHC, and didn’t have clarity on whether the GHC would be more cost effective than the legacy system, according to the GAO report. TRANSCOM reported to Congress that although its primary goal was to improve the service members’ moving experience and the government’s ability to oversee the program, officials expected to save about $2 billion over five years. But after initial shipments began in 2024 under the contract, TRANSCOM officials hadn’t determined the extent of potential savings, GAO auditors said.
Karen has covered military families, quality of life and consumer issues for Military Times for more than 30 years, and is co-author of a chapter on media coverage of military families in the book “A Battle Plan for Supporting Military Families.” She previously worked for newspapers in Guam, Norfolk, Jacksonville, Fla., and Athens, Ga.
Read the full article here
