Dan Bradley, IAM Vice President, Government & Military Relations, assesses how uncertainty and instability in the DoD moving market will continue into 2025.
Uncertainty about what might happen and instability within the DoD moving market have unfortunately been hallmarks of the DoD programme over the past six years. If you were hoping 2025 would be different, I fear it is even worse.
Following multiple delays to the release of TRANSCOM’s (United States Transport Command) annual traffic distribution list or TDL, I wanted to catalogue how TRANSCOM’s choices have driven uncertainty and instability at every step of the way over the past six months.
Why should we care? Because the companies that make up this industry need time to plan and ensure they have the right people and assets in place to serve military families when they need to move. Without proper information and advance notice, our members and other moving companies cannot adequately prepare to serve the huge spike in moves that happens over the summer every single year.
IAM has voiced its concern to DoD’s personal property leaders heading into the 2025 season at many levels, and also to Congress. Since TRANSCOM began planning to transition its personal property programme from a tender-based system to a Federal Acquisition Regulation or FAR-based contract with a single prime contract winner, we’ve advocated tirelessly for stability in the tender programme in terms of rules and requirements, so the current providers could sustain their operations and provide excellent customer support to service members, in light of such a significant change to the future structure of the programme.
In fact, performance in the tender program has been remarkably consistent over the past couple of years. Service member customer satisfaction scores for 10 out of the past 14 months have been over 90% per month, with the entire average during that 14-month period equalling over 89% of customers saying they were satisfied or better with their move. That’s pretty incredible for an industry where complete strangers come into your house to touch and pack all of your things, move it across the country or around the globe, and then bring it into your new house. No other logistics process dealing directly with the customer is as challenging. And yet 90% satisfaction, or better, is the norm. Not to mention there is a negative bias associated with all such satisfaction surveys. These satisfaction numbers are well above what TRANSCOM is seeing under the Global Household Goods Contract.
However, every new moving season TRANSCOM deems it necessary to add or alter requirements for movers in the current tender programme. At the same time, they are telling industry service providers that a total take-over of the programme via the FAR contract winner is just around the corner. Changes require investments in systems and personnel that companies need to make, at a time when they are being told their services might no longer be required by the end of the year.
For this year under the current tender programme, TRANSCOM initially began by introducing two major changes ...
Photo: Dan Bradley.