Military ‘bundling’
worries isle movers
Congress is told that streamlined
By Pete Pichaske
shipping will hurt small businesses
Phillips News ServiceWASHINGTON -- A Honolulu moving company executive told a congressional committee that the Pentagon's effort to streamline how it ships military personnel's belongings threatens to destroy Hawaii's small movers and make relocating harder for servicemen and women.
The military has been experimenting with "bundling" moves, which refers to both consolidating the various services used in relocating personnel and to grouping the moves of a number of personnel simultaneously.
The trend toward bundling will make it impossible for small businesses to compete for contracts, said Arthur Heath, director of A&P Shipping Corp. and former president of the Hawaii Moving & Storage Association.
"The practice of contract bundling by government agencies is having a devastating impact on a number of industries presently dominated by small businesses in Hawaii, as well as around the nation," said Heath, testifying yesterday at a hearing on the shipping of personal goods.
"Contract bundling in the household goods moving industry by the Department of Defense threatens to eliminate a substantial portion of the industry."
In an interview after the hearing, Heath said that if the military continued bundling, all eight of the small companies that arrange household good shipping in Hawaii -- and depend largely on military moves -- would go out of business.
And if that happened, he warned, the remaining larger companies would be unable to handle the heavy load of military moves during the summer.
"Instead of improving the quality of life for our military members, DOD's bundled, pilot programs will only aggravate the problem," said Heath.
The House Armed Services Committee's military readiness subcommittee spent five hours yesterday examining the thorny, seemingly intractable problem of improving how military personnel are moved.
Everyone at the hearing, from members of Congress to three-star generals, agreed the system now is cumbersome and frustrating for military personnel. But they could not agree on how to fix it.
The Pentagon's approach has been to experiment with using big contractors to handle all aspects of moves. But its pilot programs have proved expensive and failed to show a marked improvement in customer satisfaction, according to a report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
Moreover, the trend has raised the hackles of small movers frozen out of the lucrative military shipping market. Heath was one of five such movers who testified yesterday, all of whom decried the Pentagon's solution.
The military's experiments had supporters, however, including the Military Mobility Coalition, which represents relocation agencies that stand to benefit from the change.
The coalition argued that bundling will simplify "the stupefying array of contracts" facing transferring military personnel, thus making their lives easier. "We should want to do more, not less, for our armed services," said L. Clyde Groover Jr., chairman of the coalition.
Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-Honolulu), a member of the Armed Services Committee, said the panel is likely to step in to help the military solve the long-standing problem. He predicted the legislative response will be "more industry responsive" to movers.
