By Dan Bradley, IAM Vice President, Government & Military Relations
Uncertainty about what might happen and instability within the DoD moving market have unfortunately been hallmarks of the DoD program 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 annual traffic distribution list or TDL, I wanted to catalog 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 program 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 program 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 program.
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 equaling 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 program. At the same time, they are telling industry service providers that a total take-over of the program 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 program, TRANSCOM initially began by introducing two major changes. First, they created a new requirement for domestic movers in the program to declare common financial and administrative control (CFAC) and limit their participation in the program with those entities. This new rule was not well understood by domestic movers, or by domestic move managers who have a role in the program consolidating back-office functions for movers and shipment management functions. The confusion and uncertainty of this new rule gripped the moving industry for a couple of months, and then eventually, after much industry and association engagement, TRANSCOM delayed the requirement for at least one more year.
A second new rule added to the pile of uncertainty for current tender-based program movers, by reducing the number of performance periods in a year from four periods down to two. Again, in light of what was at the time, a TRANSCOM expectation that the prime contractor would handle 100% of domestic military moves by this April, changing major constructs to the current program seemed to be nothing more than an attempt at destabilization of the tender program.
This new change to performance periods (at what TRANSCOM says is the end of the life-cycle of the current tender program), causes movers to attempt to model what they can expect to be their company’s shipment volume for the year, off of an entirely new construct. The unknowns of how two performance periods will work in terms of how it will impact shipment awards and thus volume for each company, does not create an environment where movers are confident about what volume of work they’ll receive this year, and therefore, not confident in investing in new equipment, new trucks, and personnel. The loser in this scenario is the moving customer, the service member, who needs to move to a new duty station this year.
To top it off, TRANSCOM had delayed rate filing, and the subsequent release of the 2025 rate year traffic distribution list or TDL, to the latest date in program history. This one act alone is incredibly destabilizing to movers who cannot be sure where they will fall on the TDL for summer moves until the list is released. And the late rate filing timeline results in movers in the program having to wait deep into the Spring to even know whether their rates for the upcoming moving year will even be accepted. And on 25 April, only 20 days before shipments start picking up in the DoD peak season, movers will start getting awarded a deluge of shipments for the upcoming peak season, with probably close to or more than 20,000 shipments sitting in the DoD backlog, waiting for this late TDL drop and shipments to finally be assigned to movers.
This late timeline puts movers into a panicked environment. In a very short period of time, they learn whether their rates have been accepted and then learn where their company falls on the TDL. All of this impacts whether their volume for the summer will likely be heavy or light. At that point, they have to make quick decisions about where they might not have enough capacity to move shipments based on where they fall in the TDL rankings. If they do not have the capacity, service providers will have to start blacking out channels. This essentially removes their company from the available capacity in those locations or risk being suspended by TRANSCOM for failure to properly manage their shipment awards, potentially impacting their ability to move shipments in areas where they do have capacity.
This annual dance of figuring out capacity and capability vs. the potential volume a mover might receive in any given channel, happens every year. But the combination of TRANSCOM’s delayed rate filing, delayed rate acceptance notification, and delayed release of the TDL—added to current unknowns of overall DoD volume of shipments this year, unknowns of just how much of the current program volume will transition this summer to the contract program, and unknowns of just how the reduction of performance periods in the program from four to two will change the distribution of shipment awards—is setting up 2025 for a potentially disruptive peak season for our service members and their families. How can movers make accurate financial, personnel, and equipment decisions on such a timeline?
Movers have made the best of bad situations in years past, and I wouldn’t count them out of being able to pull it off again this year. But we shouldn’t come to expect them to continue to save the day every year when confusion, unknowns, and delayed program requirements become the norm. At some point, they will have maxed out their flexibility, and disruptions to customers’ moves will be the result. Those aren’t issues created by movers; they are issues created by those who manage the DoD Personal Property program, and the moving industry has been raising these concerns for many years. We have called for stability and continue to call for it so moving company owners can plan, invest, and provide quality moving services to American military families.