A moving company had finished packing some of a U.S. Navy senior chief’s household goods June 18, and workers were set to return to finish the packing job for his permanent change-of-station move.
Instead, the following day — on the Juneteenth holiday — the company called to tell him HomeSafe Alliance had canceled the move, leaving him in the lurch, caught up briefly in U.S. Transportation Command’s problems with its household goods contract.
The HomeSafe contract was terminated late on June 18 due to HomeSafe’s “demonstrated inability to fulfill their obligations and deliver high-quality moves to service members,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in an announcement about the contract termination.
It’s currently unclear how many service members are in the same grey area as the Navy senior chief in the midst of the busiest moving time of the year.
But a new Defense Department Permanent Change of Station Task Force is “fully engaged in overseeing the process to ensure the DOD fully meets the needs of our PCSing population,” especially given the high volume of moves during peak season, said Army Col. Junel R. Jeffrey, spokesperson for the task force.
The group was formed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to address immediate PCS needs, and to come up with long-term solutions.
Officials aren’t experiencing any significant issues with capacity of commercial companies to move service members, nor do they forecast any significant issues, Jeffrey said.
HomeSafe had said June 20 that they would complete moves already in progress.
When asked about the Navy senior chief’s situation, HomeSafe officials clarified what happened: When the HomeSafe contract was terminated June 18, “we were instructed, through the termination notice, to complete shipments that had already been picked up by that date,” said HomeSafe spokeswoman Meagan Perez.
The movers hadn’t finishing packing or loading the sailor’s household goods, so the instruction to complete shipments didn’t apply to his situation.
Information was not available on the number of HomeSafe shipments that are in flux. Jeffrey noted that HomeSafe moves under the military’s Global Household Goods Contract represented fewer than 15% of the U.S. domestic moves in 2025, and the new system wasn’t used for overseas moves.
The senior chief, who asked to remain anonymous, said the Navy personal property office on his base was helpful and pulled his shipment into the legacy system on June 20. The office was able to restart the move, and movers were back at his house by June 24 to finish the packing, he said.
The sailor did exactly the right thing by immediately contacting his local transportation office, Jeffrey said.
The legacy system is handling all moves now that the HomeSafe contract has been terminated.
“We are closely monitoring commercial capacity indicators across the U.S., and where appropriate, enabling our [moving companies in the legacy system] to increase capacity,” Jeffrey said.
She added that the task force has worked with the Defense Travel Management Office and the military services to adjust the reimbursement rates for service members who choose to move themselves — partially or fully — to ensure those who manage their own moves are compensated fairly.
The task force has also stood up an operations center for direct communication between the group and the military services and the personal property shipping offices to make sure problems are elevated immediately to the task force “in real-time for assistance,” she said.
The group is tasked with submitting recommendations to Hegseth for longer-term PCS solutions no later than Sept. 5.
In 2021, U.S. Transportation Command awarded HomeSafe the Global Household Goods Contract, worth a potential of $17.9 billion over nine years, to implement a new process for moving service members’ and their families’ household goods.
The contract was aimed at fixing long-standing problems with missed pickup and delivery dates, broken and lost items and claims. However, amid the contract’s rocky rollout this year, families reported delays in getting their household goods picked up and delivered, as HomeSafe experienced difficulties getting movers to participate.
U.S. Transportation Command, which had been gradually ramping up the volume of moves with HomeSafe since April 2024, had expected to move all domestic shipments under the new contract by this year’s peak moving season. It scrapped that plan earlier this year as problems began to mount with HomeSafe’s ability to provide enough capacity to pack, load, truck and unload service members’ belongings.
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.
Read the full article here
