Vern Evans
Seven more military bases will begin participating in a new household goods shipment program this week, as U.S. Transportation Command continues ramping up domestic shipments in the new system that officials hope will improve service member moves.
The additional seven installations joining the new program will only involve local moves within 50 miles — generally those who are moving onto or off the base for various reasons.
That brings the total to 38 installations participating, with additional bases in 22 states scheduled to come online by the end of the year.
The contractor for the new program, HomeSafe Alliance, also began picking up the first shipments that are moving between states from a limited number of bases during the week of Sept. 23. Those current interstate shipments are going from Norfolk, Virginia, to and from Seattle, Jacksonville, Florida, or San Diego. It also includes shipments between San Diego and Seattle.
TRANSCOM will soon start ordering a limited number of interstate shipments moving between Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, and Camp Pendleton, California as well.
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The additional bases starting local moves Monday are Fort Eisenhower and Fort Moore, Georgia; Fort Leavenworth and Fort Riley, Kansas;, Fort Knox, Kentucky; Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri; and Grand Forks Air Force Base, North Dakota. If service members qualify to be included in moves within the new system, they will automatically be placed into it when they start to schedule their household goods move.
The new process, designed to fix longstanding problems with service members’ moves, essentially outsources the management of household goods shipping, but retains TRANSCOM’s continued oversight. But instead of dealing directly with the hundreds of movers participating in the legacy system, TRANSCOM has contracted that function to HomeSafe Alliance. It consolidates all of those moves under a $6.2 billion Global Household Goods Contract, which could potentially be worth up to $17.9 billion over nine years.
TRANSCOM officials expect to fully implement the new system for domestic moves by the spring. They’ll begin the transition of international moves in September 2025.
The domestic phase of the contract “is going well, with shipment requests being successfully fulfilled,” Andy Dawson, director of the Defense Personal Property Management Office, told reporters Sept. 24. TRANSCOM has gotten positive feedback from the customers whose household goods are being moved, as well as the military branches’ transportation offices, he said.
Among other things, the new system provides a single point of contact for troops during their move, and the digital capability to manage and track their shipments. It places accountability for the quality of moves in the hands of HomeSafe.
As of Sept. 30, DOD has sent orders for 244 shipments to HomeSafe, to include 63 interstate shipment requests. Of the 181 local moves at the 31 installations that have been participating in a gradual rollout since April, 141 have been completed. TRANSCOM officials didn’t have an estimate of the increased number of shipments this month with the additional seven bases.
TRANSCOM officials work with HomeSafe and local military transportation offices to make sure locations are ready to switch to the new system, doing a slow rollout to avoid risk to the system which moves around 300,000 household goods shipments a year.
“All of the military services and the U.S. Coast Guard have had service members move under [the new contract], but based on those initial locations of where we started, the Navy has been a tremendous supporter of our transformation efforts,” Dawson said. About 64% of those moves have been sailors.
“We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we believe GHC will produce a better relocation experience for our service members and families,” Dawson said.
TRANSCOM officials declined to provide information about the percentage of on-time pickups and deliveries of household goods, citing “proprietary information.” Under the legacy system, movers are rated on customer satisfaction surveys, on-time pickup and delivery, and claims ratios.
Some movers in the current system have been urging lawmakers to force a pause in the contract and require the Government Accountability Office to conduct an audit. They cite questions about how the new system’s federal regulations will affect those involved in the military moving industry, possibly causing movers to leave the military moving business, resulting in less capacity to move military families.
One concern is the wage requirements under the federal Service Contract Act. The new household goods contract takes into account “any wage determination update that is made by the Department of Labor,” according to TRANSCOM. Once a DOL wage determination is made, HomeSafe can request compensation updates to the contract in order to increase compensation for employees working under GHC in that wage category.
Dawson said officials have been working with Department of Labor representatives to get more clarity for moving companies on how the rules will affect them.
It’s HomeSafe’s responsibility to get the necessary capacity in the moving industry to support the household goods program, Dawson said. The contracts are between HomeSafe and the movers that are becoming part of the network, not TRANSCOM.
“As we continue to move forward, I expect HomeSafe to have the capacity needed to support our service members and families,” Dawson 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.
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