RELO Roundtable…a gathering place

Miltary hosts movers to review peak season plansToday's the day the the military Surface Deployment Distribution Command (SDDC) is scheduled to meet with the captains of the household goods moving industry to explain the scoping procedure they plan to use in this year's iteration of the Defense Personal Property Program, DP3. SDDC is the executive [...]

Once upon a time, way back when product and service suppliers still talked directly to their customers and negotiating in good faith still helped guide the transaction, licensed household goods carriers operating in the United States were not required to sort and stack items inside a private residence or customer-procured public storage facility.   Doing so [...]

A DOD PerspectiveAnyone who's been in the domestic or international household goods (HHG) moving industry for awhile might be interested in checking out The evolution of DOD's Defense Personal Property Program, a comprehensive new article published online at The Official Homepage of the United States Army As you're reading through the well-documented history of the [...]

Just as the American Forces Press Service posted news bragging about process improvements that the U.S. Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) was making to their Defense Personal Property System (DPS), the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC) issued a Draft copy of new qualification requirements for Department of Defense approved transportation service providers (TSP). SDDC is [...]

A DP3 Primer Several weeks ago a concerned owner-operator contracted to a fairly large van line agent sent me a link to the prepared remarks delivered by Robert H. Moore to a House Committee on Small Business. At the time, Moore was the deputy chief of staff for operations for the Military Traffic Management Command [...]

A little over three years ago the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command (SDDC) launched the Department of Defense's (DOD) newly reengineered household goods moving program — the Defense Personal Property Program, or DP3. It's the latest iteration that began in 1995 to make the DOD relocation process more efficient. SDDC is the executive agent [...]

Anyone in the household goods moving industry who relies on the Department of Defense (DOD) for some or all of their small business revenue should be particularly attentive to the recent announcement by the military Surface Deployment Distribution Command (SDDC) that they intend to change how the defense personal property fuel surcharge is administered next [...]

When I was first became involved in using alternative transportation and warehousing resources to move and store new and used household goods and other special commodities in the 1980s it was because of dwindling internal driver, equipment, and storage capacity resources at the international van line I worked at. One of the things that excited [...]

First it was the industry's sales force. Faced with early-May blackout notices and often confusing embargo restrictions (or super-selective booking requirements), many sales people began looking for greener pastures beginning in June – right at the start of the traditional peak moving season. Some of the cut-offs announced by the big names in the domestic [...]

When my mother-in-law passed, my wife received a small hand-stitched embroidery from her sister-in-law as a thoughtful, personal condolence. When the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window. It's a variation of an old Lithuanian proverb used by Julie Andrews character Maria in Rodgers and Hammerstein's popular classic, Sound of Music. The message [...]