It's a busy day here at Maxwell. I walked over to the BX to get a haircut and saw an F-16 take off, a bunch of C-130s take off, what I believe was an A-10 fighter take off, and a CH-47 Chinook helicopter hovering around with some kind of payload dangling. But . . . the incredibly cool aircraft that I saw today is not the subject of this post. This post involves a much more exciting topic . . . moving things in the military.
Let me start my saying that this information probably will be helpful to folks who are moving overseas. Within the Continental United States (
CONUS), there are more options, such as do-it-yourself (
DITY) moves, and partial
DITY moves. Many people use these options because they end up making some money off of their move. If you're moving to
OCONUS (outside of the
CONUS), you clearly cannot do a
DITY move. So that's what this post is about.
I also should mention that the permitted weight changes depending on rank and dependent status. I'll put down was I was permitted as a O-2 with 1 dependent. When you set up your shipment, the traffic management office (
TMO) will tell you your weight limits. The first thing you should do is set up an appointment with the local
TMO at your local base. For us, the local base happened to be an Army base. There's no such thing as
TMO in the Army. They call it something else. When I called to make an appointment with
TMO, they had no idea what I was talking about. Finally, I told them I needed to talk to someone about moving my household goods. The communication barrier was breached and I was able to speak with someone. The point is that you should be aware that the terminology varies by service and that you should be prepared to deal with it.
Another important thing to keep in mind is that the moving of stuff in the military can be one of the most frustrating things that you have to do. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate the fact that they move my stuff for me, but it can be an incredibly slow, confusing, and mistake-ridden process. Just be prepared to deal with delays, lost paperwork, etc. If you have a smooth move without any problems or delays, consider yourself lucky.
This process may be different for enlisted members. I don't really know. At the very least, enlisted member don't usually take a commercial airline. At
Aviano, there's a weekly military flight from Baltimore (
BWI). Other than that, I can't really address any other differences.
For the ease of discussion, I categorized the items into 4 groups: (1) Unaccompanied Goods; (2) Household Goods; (3) Privately-Owned Vehicles (
POV), commonly referred to as your car; and (4) you and your dependents. I'll discuss each in turn.
(1) Unaccompanied Goods; and (2) Household GoodsI put these two together because it's easier to explain them together by talking about the differences in the two shipments. Your unaccompanied goods are those household items that you'll want to have right away. This includes clothes, linens, some kitchen items, etc. You can, however, put anything you want in unaccompanied goods, within some size limitations. We were limited to 900 lbs. Unaccompanied goods shipment takes about a month to get to Italy.
Household Goods are all of the rest of the items that you have in your house -- furniture, pictures, sporting equipment, televisions, etc. Your household goods shipment is the BIG shipment. We were limited to around 11,000 lbs. This shipment takes about 2 months to get to Italy. When you visit
TMO, they will give you an idea of how to estimate the weight of your items. They will not weigh your goods when they pick them up, so you should estimate well. That being said, 900 lbs. is a lot and 11,000 lbs. is a ton (actually it's more than 5 short tons, but I digress). Unless you have a lot of stuff, you should be fine.
The process is fairly simple, although it was a little bewildering at first. You have to visit the
TMO office and fill out a form indicating the days on which you want you things picked up. The
TMO office contacts their commercial moving companies. Those companies call you, ask you questions about your stuff, and set up an appointment to move your things. For us, there were separate companies that moved these 2 shipments. The unaccompanied goods people came the first day and the household goods people came the second day. One big tip is to have the two shipments separated before the movers show up. We emptied a walk-in closet and then put all of our unaccompanied stuff in the closet. When the unaccompanied goods movers came, all we had to do was point them to the closet. I think that they appreciated it.
You must clean up all of your stuff. It also helps to have it organized. You have to unplug everything and take everything off of the walls. You need not pack anything, but, if you do, they will check it and re-pack it if necessary. We put some of our kitchen appliances back in their original boxes, which was cool with them. Finally, we were able to bring our many dried spices by taking them out of their glass jars and putting them in
Gladware containers. When you visit
TMO, they will give you a packet of information that explains, to a certain extent, what you have to do.
If you don't want them to move something, make sure you label it clearly or put it somewhere else. We locked the things that we did not want them to take in our outside storage locker. That way, they couldn't get to them. We also labeled a couple of items that were staying with us -- see pictures below. So now my wife is living in an empty apartment and sleeping on an air mattress -- see pictures. She has a dog and cat to keep her company.
Overall, the move went smoothly. I will post again about household goods in couple of months when we (I hope) get them on the back end and move into our Italian place.
(3) POVWe have not yet shipped our car, but plan to drop it off in a couple of weeks. It takes 6-8 weeks to get to Italy and it's much cheaper to rent a car in the U.S. Therefore, we are shipping it now and renting a car in Atlanta until we leave. You can get a lot of information about this portion of
moving by visiting the American Auto Logistics website. To get there,
click here. Basically, this company has depots around the country where you can drop off your car and it will be shipped to your overseas location. You can drop it off anytime. I don't have much more information about this at the moment because we haven't dropped it off yet. There are some documentary requirements that can be found at the above website. I'll post more tips if any arise later.
(4) You and Your DependentsIn order to understand my travel planning, a brief description of my travel timeline is necessary. I received what are called my Permanent Change of Station (PCS) orders in July of 2007. This, essentially, was my confirmation that I was in the Air Force and had been assigned to
Aviano. In August of 2007, I traveled from Atlanta to Montgomery for COT. After COT, I drove back to Atlanta and, within my allotted two travel days, flew non-stop to Venice, Italy. Two weeks later I flew non-stop from Venice back to Atlanta. I then drove back to Atlanta for
JASOC. This entire time, my wife, dog, and cat remained in Atlanta. I now am in Montgomery. My wife, dog, cat, and I have one-way tickets to travel back to Europe at the end of
JASOC.
Due to this somewhat complicated travel schedule, my information may not be applicable in most cases. Nevertheless, I'll tell my tale. To start, there are two types of military orders that I am
delaing with: (1) PCS orders; and (2) temporary duty (
TDY) orders. As noted above, my initial orders were PCS orders because they dealt with my initial assignment to
Aviano. Also, these orders had what is called a
TDY en route because they included a trip to Maxwell for
COt prior to my report date to
Aviano. In any event, my second set of orders, the ones that I received in
Aviano, were
TDY orders because I was reporting to Maxwell fro temporary duty --
JASOC. My
PSC orders had a number on them that authorized my travel to Maxwell and then to
Aviano. Because I drove to Maxwell, I did not have to book a flight to Montgomery. When I arrived at
Aviano, however, I filed a travel voucher for my travel from Atlanta to Montgomery (this is reimbursable). I called the Pentagon's travel agent (I received the number from
JAX, the Pentagon JAG office that deals with hiring and assignments) and booked a one-way ticket from Atlanta to Venice, Italy. I could not book a round-trip ticket because the travel back was for
TDY and, therefore, had to booked on my
TDY orders. I had not yet received those orders.
Whew!
When I reported to
Aviano in October, I began working on getting my
TDY orders for
JASOC. An important point to keep in mind is that there is very little hand-holding in the military -- you are responsible for making sure everything happens -- even if you don't fully understand what is supposed to happen. When I received the orders (at the last minute), I took them to
TMO to authorize my travel. I had to do this because I had not (and have not) been issued a government travel card (
GTC). Therefore, my I had to make sure my
TDY orders stated that I was not a
GTC holder so that I could simply use a copy of the orders to book the travel. After
TMO authorized my travel, I went to the base-level travel agent (
SATO Travel) to book my ticket back to the states. I only was able to book a one-way ticket because my
TDY assignment (
JASOC) was more than 30 days. I suppose that's a regulation.
When I got back to Montgomery, I wasn't sure how to book my travel back to Italy. After conferring with a few of the more experienced folks here, I went to
SATO Travel here at Maxwell. Because I do not have a
GTC, I had to bring copies of my orders. Basically, I took a copy of my
TDY orders, on which I was traveling, and a copy of my PCS orders, on which there was an authorization for my wife's travel. I booked both at the same time with the two different orders.
After the seats were confirmed, I called the airline to reserve space for the dog and the cat. There is limited space for animals, so we wanted to do this early. We were successful.
I should note that all of this likely will be easier once two things happen: (1) I get a GTC; and (2) I have settled into a base. If there's one thing that I've learned in my short time in the Air Force, administrative functions are highly decentralized and, for the most part, decisions are handled at the base level. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be a little frustrating when you're trying to get things done before you report to your first duty location.
In any event, military travel can be a little confusing and frustrating. But, there are some very good things. For example, there was a recent change in the rules, and military members now are permitted to retain their frequent flyer miles when traveling on the government's dime. For my travel to Italy in September/October, I acquired nearly 10,000 miles. Pretty cool.
Like I said in the beginning, my travel is a bit odd. Even so, I hope that this post helps. The main point to remember is that you just need to ask questions. People may think that you're an idiot, but, for the most part, they'll still answer your questions. And that's really all that you want.
