After last year's moving season was plagued by problems in shipping troops' privately owned vehicles to and from overseas assignments, this year's season went relatively smoothly, according to officials in charge of the program.

"The contract is performing very well this year," said Air Force Col. Michael Erhardt, director of the personal property program for the Surface Deployment and Distribution Command.

"We put a lot of fixes in place over the last year. It's matured to the point where the chatter we're hearing, the feedback we're hearing from customers is significantly down from last year," Erhardt said.

Last year, the number of vehicles that were overdue by one or more days beyond their required delivery date was "in the thousands," Erhardt said. "This year, the numbers we are tracking on a weekly basis are well below 100. And the number of days on average they're overdue is significantly lower this year."

After a new contractor, International Auto Logistics, took over the shipment of troops' POVs last year, thousands of vehicles were delivered late — some not just days late, but months late.

By midsummer 2014, the chorus of troop complaints was rising about late deliveries, problems being able to track or find information on their vehicles, and the contractor's unresponsiveness to emails and phone calls inquiring about the status of their vehicles.

Then-chief of U.S. Transportation Command, Air Force Gen. Paul Selva, elevated the management of the contract for the movement of POVs to his command level in early August 2014 to address all those issues.

Selva, who this summer became vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, created a team to closely monitor IAL's performance, and conduct site visits to validate data about the location of troops' vehicles.

That team still exists, but the scope and frequency of its meetings have decreased as performance has improved, Erhardt said.

SDDC has primary responsibility for monitoring the program, although officials report to leadership in both SDDC and TRANSCOM so that both can maintain sufficient oversight the program, he 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.

Share:
In Other News
Load More