Industry Day Part 2.pdf

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IND _0059 (Completed 08/13/25) Transcript by Rev.com

Speaker 1 (00:00):

It. I used to be a truck driver when I was in the military and I'm an acquisitions guy. I'm not a household goods person, so please forgive me for problem statement number four, commercial industry ideas. The bottom bullet says what are the advantages or disadvantages to moving managers or agents? My ask was meant to prompt like what's the differences between those and how does it impact the program IE asset owning versus non-asset owning? What are the benefits and cons? So if I misworded that because I had someone in questioned me on that, I do apologize. It's not meant to be in unknowing of this. It's meant to kind of spark what are the disadvantages and advantage? What are should the joint task force consider and how that impacts the program. So if this is kind of an incorrect statement, don't beat me

up. Too bad about it.

(00:47):

I do apologize for that. But I do want to lead in to say these final two blocks are truly yours. This is industry innovation. This is what do you guys ideas that you guys have? What are commercial industry ideas for this program? It is followed by a one hour block of pure industry remarks, no guiding, no offenses, no corralling anybody. What do you guys want to bring up? What is important to you that the joint task force must consider in the decision? And the SecDef brief on September 5th as the general stated this morning. So I lead in with that. I won't really lead in on the next one. These next two are really wide open for you, so I appreciate your inputs. We're on the last two stretches here. We've got 54 minutes on this one and a solid hour on the last one. Closing us out right around 1600 or four o'clock if no questions from the panel to start. Let's go. Industry ideas, sir, please.

Speaker 2 (01:42):

Yeah, let me just take a second to follow up on what we were talking about a minute ago and it was on the KPIs and the gentleman from Mark came up here and he was absolutely right. You need to make sure that what we're looking at is applies to our industry. I think that's one thing. And then two, it's simple and every one of these KPIs is what we use to review contracts today and that we make pricing decisions on. And every one of these KPIs can be found in government indices. It's wages and benefits, it's labor rates for commercial truck repair. It is commercial warehousing, lease costs, insurance cost, interest rates, and the acquisition cost of a buildings and equipment. And those are the things that we look at to determine our pricing and that's what from an asset based mover, those are the things that are important to us.

(02:29):

And if we don't watch those costs, then our costs versus profitability get way out of hand. And this last few years, just to give you some examples of this on the wages and benefits, wages are up 14%. Benefits are up seven labor costs and repair of equipment's up 9%. Commercial warehousing lease costs are up 15%. Insurance costs before this last turn at 33.5% were up 12.7% already. Interest rates, everybody knows what's happening there. When we used to be able to acquire buildings and equipment for around 3.5%, now we're paying 7%. So real interest cost and what we're doing to operate our businesses is real.

And then again, the acquisition cost of equipment and then you add the interest cost in it is cost us about 35% more to buy a piece of equipment today than it did just a few years ago. And so from an asset mover, those are our real costs and that's what we have to measure against and we have to do our pricing based on what's happening in the marketplace. And so when you guys think about and look at KPIs and make sure that you're looking at stuff that's specific to our industry, that has an impact on us.

Thank you.

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Speaker 3 (03:44):

Hi, I'm Ruth Maritz with Interstate International. We are out of the Virginia to DC area. We're an international TSP part of a van line and we're also an agent, but I'm going to put that hat to aside for now because I'm also a military spouse, right? So husband retired after 25 years having served at US transcom himself, fitting that I'm starting here at Scott Air Force Base talking to you all today. One of the things that I learned coming, I mean I guess because I have the industry experience, I've applied a different lens to military transportation and moves as the spouse effectively at home runs the show while the member is right. So it's left to us of all of the logistics from the family through dogs and children and providing for daycare and all of that. And so at the end we're kind of held to understanding what's going on.

(04:35):

I as a colonel's wife understood right, moved many, many times internationally. Domestically, I got it.

But when you have staff, Sergeant Johnson's wife who's 19, never left her home except for that. And that's her first experience. She doesn't know that you should take pictures off the wall two days before.

She doesn't know that you should save hardware and box one and keep it with you so that when you get to your new home and all you want to do is have your children sleep in the beds, that they'd just had to be there ready for them. And so at the end of the day, I think when my husband was a group commander at North Dakota at Grand Forks and we were stationed there, one of the best opportunities I had was to serve as the key spouse for him for his squadron and his first sergeant was amazing.

(05:19):

And what him and I did was forged a relationship. I didn't have a job in the industry at that point because I leaned out to be his spouse as a commander at the time. And what I learned was was that as a spouse, there is a network and Megan Harless, as much as we all kind of know Megan Harless and what she champions, there is a spirit of what she champions that needs to be addressed and that is education. You got to educate the spouses on what they need to do in advance of a move, not the service member because again, he or she is off doing their outprocessing in processing while the spouse is keeping it at home. Again, just simple things. Dry goods, you got to take it if it's factory sealed, things of that nature. And I think the key spouse program is something that could benefit the entire move experience for a service member's, wife or husband.

(06:09):

So I think that's where one of the concept or practices that the task force could look at was at the base level with the base commander working through the first sergeants and the spouse network to get some sort of grassroots effort in the spirit of Megan Harless, but also education. I think that's the key. If you educate your customer, they're a better customer, but also pay that forward to an industry that you love. So that's where I stand in that I still do this after 25 years because I love the industry and I try to educate every chance I get, whether your spouse or your military service member. So I think that is something that the joint task force should look like. Also, outprocessing in processing, I don't know who mentioned it over there, but one of the things that my husband had to do was outprocessing go through a checkbox.

(06:57):

He had to get his medical records, he had to go here, he had to go there on base and he had to do the same thing when he unprocessed. Why not put that customer satisfaction and survey as a requirement of outprocessing or InProcess? Because you need to know where you stand as an industry, whether good or bad because you can't measure something that you don't have a statistic for. The last thing, when my husband was with US Transcom and there was a joint, was it systems acceptance testing https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=0 https://www.rev.com/ https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=224.41 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=275.68 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=319.3 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=369.62 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=417.74 program industry was much more involved in building DPS the way that it is now. We had about a three week, I'll call it the breakfast club for the lack of a better phrase, but there's about 20 of us TSPs at that point that came together and we tested stress test DPS stress tested against the business rules to make sure that there were no gaps.

(07:44):

And DPS is a monster of a system. I get that. And we were all part of that process. But what I would encourage you all to do is invest in the industry, engage in that conversation, have us help you shape the business rules. And that's where that DPS system was shaped with industry and you had dialogue. I mean there's so many times that General Schwartz at the time was involved in that process and so we were able to have dialogues with him as to how we could improve that system. And I think that's where a concept or a practice that could go going forward is to invite those industry stakeholders and key spouses or any spouse, military spouse at that same round table so that they understand what is coming upon them so they can better educate their base.

Speaker 4 (08:33):

Good afternoon, Kevin Myers, NDTA. I've said listen to this, most of the day I've been quiet, which is unusual for me if you ask and I keep saying how are we going to incentivize performance? I guess one of the questions I want to go back to the government is why did you deify it? Why is it you went from four performance periods to get the best of the best performers to rebook shipments four times a year down to two? So now instead of getting cream of the crop two additional times a year, you're only getting 'em twice now instead of four. It's just almost like short fuse in the summertime. Short fuse should be for that customer, that service member that all of a sudden his orders change and he needs a short fuse shipment, not because he forgot for the last 30 days to go book his move. So they throw things into short fuse and when you get short fuse, you're getting sometimes in the summertime with peak season going from seven days to 20 days, you're not getting to the best carriers always or the best movers when you do that, you're de that, if that makes sense. So thank you.

Speaker 1 (09:45):

Thank you sir. Can I take a pause, sir? John, Chris, Speaker 5 (09:50):

I didn't catch the name of the last lady who spoke but I wanted it ma'am right there. My public affairs officer, Wynn, is he here in the room? Pete's in the back. Pete, raise your hand please ma'am, if you're able, would you please spend just a few minutes I had like to capture. Thank you ma'am.

Speaker 6 (10:18):

Thank you sir. Thank you. Steve White Camp, California Moving and Storage Association. I think that that lady did key something in my mind too that I think has been a really shortcoming subsequent to the start of the G-S-C-G-H-C process, which was General Lyons at that point determined that the associations should no longer play a role in communication with what at that time us Transcom prior to that SDDC where we were always a part of the PPFs, we were individually all invited to the hot washes afterward, had dialogue back and forth, we're a conduit between agents, industry and the services. And I think that that separation that happened three years ago or so has had negative impact. And I would encourage you to look at re-engaging with the associations, California. We represent the largest group of agents in the country in an individual state, IAM, huge A-T-A-M-S-C, maybe one or two others that https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=0 https://www.rev.com/ https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=464.81 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=513.86 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=585.15 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=590.61 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=618.75 they're great resources for you. In fact, they're great distributors of getting your message out to the individual agents that don't have the opportunity or the resources to be here with you today and for us also to bring feedback to you from them. So that was a separation that happened. Some of you may have not have that history, may not have been here prior to that. I think it's very valuable that you know, we still want to engage with you guys. Thank you.

Speaker 7 (12:13):

Hold one sir.

Speaker 5 (12:16):

Okay.

Speaker 7 (12:16):

Does it work, Speaker 5 (12:17):

Sir? We talked about that yesterday. Just want to give you some immediate feedback. Our next engagement is what you described. I'm not exactly sure yet who all the players are going to be. I wrote down the ones that you've mentioned and those we've talked about as well. But next step after this to have an engagement. Like I said, I don't know exactly how it's going to be, but I've got the ones that you recommended for sure. So thank you for bringing that up.

Speaker 8 (12:49):

Georgia Angle with Trello Spine Consulting. I kind of echo what Ruth had said with building that customer expectation, but it goes beyond just working with them on what's going to happen with your move. It's those little extra steps that in the commercial world we work with them, we work with the customer to help guide them as to what they need to do. So I echo what Ruth said, but there is also I think another piece missing here. Currently those business rules are cumbersome to learn and of course we want it simplified, but hopefully we can get to more simplified guidelines. But when a shipment is occurring, you have the customer there that is understanding one way of things to be done. The packers or loaders a different interpretation and they rely on the inspector or the local transportation office to perhaps come in and mediate and help make sure it's a successful move for all. And I know that that's not occurring as often as it was in the past and I think if there's a way to try to improve on that, then it means everybody's working together for the common goal for the customer. So that's one thing that I see that's kind of missing on here on the practice and going forward.

(14:20):

Something that he said about incentivizing the performance, and it goes back to stability. If we can get, if I know that a good job is done, I know I'm going to get more business, then that's how I'm going to be incentivized with it. So the goal, we want the customer satisfaction and they do have to fill that out. It was one of a big concern we had when we went away from a data matrix on our scores to a customer satisfaction was told it was going to be pick up the phone and call them. We know that's not going to happen. We've got to find that conduit to get a true picture, not just these arbitrary statements or questions that are out there. Did you like it or not? Maybe how can we get some more details, especially when it's, I really wasn't that happy with it so that we can take that corrective action back and make those improvements.

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Speaker 9 (15:28):

Steve McKenna allied some of the things to consider a little bit of a repeat, but consider the asset owners in terms of participant qualification for the program. Those are the folks that have invested in this space and invested in quality moves claims. I think there should be a complete round table discussion on claims. You've asked a few times, how can the claims process be improved? We settle claims for a lot of folks and do it, I think pretty effectively. So I'd really love to drill into what are the issues that the members are finding not satisfactory or what are the issues that transcom or the owner, business owner on the military side are thinking are out of alignment? Because I think we can come up with solutions just at this point in time. It's hard to say, well we can do X, Y, and Z to process when I don't know if that's a problem.

(16:36):

So I would really encourage you to drill deep into that and there's plenty of people to bring into that CPC organizations, other professional claim handling management organizations that could bring you some other data points there. Keep the pricing structures familiar with how people operate businesses today.

Now I'm always one to look forward and try to improve things and potentially change things, but these things are embedded in how we do business and significant changes in that overnight are troubling. You just can't track the ball, right? In terms of what it means to you, incentivized performance is all about more work, but fundamentally you need performance measurements that are clear, transparent, and consistent and meet some statistical robustness to them. I know Tim has advocated for that for a long time, so frankly the incentive is volume. So make sure that the measurement components are clear and actually produce what you're looking there.

(17:52):

And I think the mood manager agent and following with Chris's comments there, I think you got to think about it more as the roles played as opposed to the entities that are there. A van line can be a mood manager and a supply chain system, right? There are entities that are truly mood management companies and they have a separate supply chain that's not necessarily contracted with them. And then you have agents who provide service, but frankly there's probably some robust agents that could also be a mood manager in the process. So I think you need to understand the scope and scale of the abilities of the folks in the room and we're not just shoehorned into one thing or another. We might be able to bring more solution to the organization at the end of the day, but you should take a minute to understand the players that are in the room and the range of capability of the folks here.

Speaker 10 (18:58):

Thank you. Hi, Scott Kelly with side of companies. First of all, I think the industry has done an incredible job today of describing some of the challenges that we're dealing with on our end of the spectrum and what we've gone through the past few years with the uncertainty and all of the things that have already been mentioned. I won't go over 'em again. So I think we know on our end what problems we're trying to solve for ourselves. That's pretty clear I think by now six hours in or whatever the case may be, and I've been thinking about this for hours now. What I'm not sure about is what problems you guys are trying to solve. I'm not sure that if I were you, I'd be concerned about how often we train our labor force or how we incentivize our labor. To me that shouldn't matter to you guys.

(19:56):

You should only matter about the end result and what your providers look like or what you want from the program and what you want from your providers. Right now you've heard everybody talk about all those things, which is great. I mean it's great that everybody's done such a super job at sharing all that https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=0 https://www.rev.com/ https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=928.04 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=996.56 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=1072.68 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=1138.2 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=1196.97 information, but I'm not sure why you care that much that far down in the weeds I guess is what I'm saying. So we've identified the issues on our end is your goal here and don't get me wrong, process improvement, ongoing improvements to the program and to the customer service, all the aspects of the business. We all do that every single day. Everybody in this room, we all work with each other. I can vouch for just about everybody here that we all try to do a better job every single day at the level we can afford to do it. You guys have heard all about that already. What I don't understand is what problems you guys are trying to solve on your end? Are you just trying to make this program easier to manage? Are you trying to deal with less people or companies? Are you trying to do something different on domestic?

(21:12):

I've struggled to contribute today because I'm just not sure where all this is really going. And again, I understand it's continuous improvement in the relocation process, but if you could at least help me, maybe I'm six hours behind here, I don't know, but if you could help me understand that would be

Speaker 11 (21:32):

Appreciated. Our central focus since the secretary stood up, the task force has been to improve the experience for the service member and everything you've given us today gives us a better window into the industry so we can structure the future program to give us better service for the service member.

The central point of the task force and some of the things that we're thinking about is the program structured to interface with the industry in the way the industry is built. So the last six hours have helped us understand that better. I open up to the rest of the panel into the EG if there's any other amplifying comments, John. John, Speaker 5 (22:29):

Okay. At the end of the day, the way the secretary describes it is readiness and war fighting. Okay, now back that off. When he is hearing consistently about problems with PCS moves, it bleeds off time energy from readiness and war fighting. So that is the centralized, which leads into how do you make it better for the service member. Then when we have had engagements, there's other subsets which probably get towards what you're talking about. How do you get money to the curb? How do you incentivize industry? It all ties together essentially we're trying to understand things from soup to nuts so that we make fair assessments at the end of the day, I want to be fair to you, choose to believe that or not to believe it. I want to be fair to you while trying to get away from having to worry about household goods and get back to readiness, does that help?

Speaker 10 (23:37):

It does and I appreciate that very much and I do believe you, I don't think there's any question here that everybody's efforts are sincere, right? So for me it's not about that. But what I want to make sure of is when you look at the metrics under the circumstances today, they're remarkable. When I look at our own performance metrics with companies like Apple, Google, Raymond, James, Walt, Disney World, you name it, right? One company compared to an industry for one account, the industry here under the circumstances that we're working under that you've heard about today is performing incredibly well. So is there always room for improvement? Absolutely, a hundred percent. Nobody in this room would say that there isn't, but I think we need to maybe level set expectations a little bit too. And so I also don't want the GHC hangover, if you will, to spill over into this environment or this program because we're not here because industry failed on GHC industry couldn't do the work and I know we don't want to rehash the past, so I won't get into that and appreciate that.

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(24:54):

But we're not here because of that. You guys need to be an easier customer to deal with and you've heard some of the things today that would help that and I so appreciate the fact that you're sitting here listening to this all day. I really do. And you've run the meeting incredibly well. So that's a nice change.

So I appreciate the readiness aspect. Great. It's no different for our corporate customers or residential customers. They got to get from point A to point DB for all the same reasons. Obviously it's not always national security or whatever, but their issues are just as important as yours in that level. And so I just want to make sure we're not blending all this together. When you look at a two and a half percent missed pickup rate on 300,000 moves. Yeah, I get it. That's still a lot of missed pickups.

(25:42):

That's incredible. It's absolutely incredible. And those are by transcom zone measures. When you look at a 90 plus percent on time delivery rate or whatever that latest number is on that number of shipments, that's incredible under these circumstances that you've all heard about today. So that's why I was kind of getting to, is this becoming a situation or a conversation about what makes it easier for you guys to manage? And that's okay. If it is, that's fine. So that's where the confusion came for me. And again, I just didn't want the GHC hangover to spill over into this environment because two totally separate things. So

Speaker 5 (26:35):

The way you frame that is fair. Grabbing A GHC hangover, here's the only thing I would say. GHC was a transformation effort. Contract is a problem, okay? You're not being blamed in any way for that contract, but you also know that we move swiftly, cancel the contract termination for cause and we turn to you as reliable partners. And so I think that's a compliment to you. What I would like is to walk out of here with the overarching understanding from industry, what you want us to concentrate on tied to those options that we're going to present to the SEC death. No, you're great

Speaker 1 (27:25):

Sir.

(28:06):

Colonel Kado, do you have comment? Alright, I would. I think it's very appropriate. Timely, sir. Just remember this is all forward-looking because as the joint task force is from OSD SEC, DEF directed, there's or no decisions have been made. I mean a testament to General Curtis and his leadership. He from day one has said, I want to understand everything I want to, no decisions have been made, no preconceived notion. So we're really looking for your input and understanding of how to make the program better looking forward, understanding the JC hangover and what the tenders can provide. So that's the point of that information. So I really think in the next hour and a half if we can hammer out what do you guys really need to tell us to inform the joint task force for their decision making, I think that would be critical to close this out today. Thank you for your patience, sir. Great, Speaker 12 (28:52):

Thank you. Tim Lenthall with National Van Lines about incentivizing performance. I think the thing that I would like to see us focus on as we transition into whatever you end up recommending to the secretary and where we're at in the current program, it's accurately measuring performance. I think there's a disconnect between the way performance is measured versus those that are providing good quality and that happens in a few different ways. So where there's a customer satisfaction survey currently that's utilized, there's this idea where we're awarding neutral scores when you don't have a large enough https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=0 https://www.rev.com/ https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=1494.14 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=1542.38 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=1595.07 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=1645.17 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=1686.71 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=1732.47 sample size to be considered statistically valid from a statistic standpoint, it really doesn't make any sense because it's a random sampling technique. We're not doing a random sample. It goes on throughout all of the different data. Scott talked about the on-time pickup performance, is it 98 or 97%?

That's the minimum because there's also a component of that that's actually about data entry.

(29:52):

Data entry is important and it needs to be timely, but our on-time pickup is actually a little higher than that. So the goal that I think that would be the best way to incentivize our performance is to accurately measure that performance, get that data back to us, and then again reward that performance with more opportunities to business. And then the second thing that I thought about is concepts of practices that you could consider. And this goes to another point that Scott was making about you could have 90% customer satisfaction, but on 300,000 moves, that's still 30,000 military families that satisfied. It's a big number and one of the things that all the folks in the military have in common is you all PCs. So it's like talking about the weather, everybody's PCs and you can talk about your experience in that. So there's a little bit of an echo chamber that I think that occurs there that magnifies some of the negative comments or negative experiences that our customers have.

(30:54):

And you set up the operations center, the toll free number. I think that's a great idea and I think it could be expanded a little bit because in the commercial marketplace, when I have a customer that goes online because they've had a bad experience with me and they say, Hey, national did this bad, terrible thing to me, we engage that customer directly and we take them offline, but before it goes viral, and I think that's something that could benefit our industry and also you as the program operators as well because I believe that there's a little bit of a sense that this program has not been successful and I think it has been. I think by and large most of us in here believe that we're providing high quality. I know what our customer satisfaction, average customer satisfaction score is for our company and it's as good or better than you'll find any other industry. So I think there's opportunities there for you to try to get in front of those customers, take them offline before it goes viral, before they go to Congress, work with the moving company who's responsible for it because we want to get those problems solved too. Thank you.

Speaker 13 (32:03):

Dead Kar, Dean Van Lines, I gave some of this advice in private to a few people here, but I want to share with a general group and I think what you're hearing from both Scott and from Tim is that the program as it stands is delivering a certain level of service and I think that you all want to improve it. One of the first comment that I said today was essentially set your KPIs and communicate to us the goals. That seems to make a lot of sense, but when you guys are considering really on the macro level how to move forward, you have a system that's delivering results and that's proven to be resilient, right? We just saw what happened there was, I know a lot of concern from all of you. What would happen this peak season? I think for the most part the people in this room and the industry stepped out, stepped up and we were able to take care of the military service members that are moving the peak season.

(32:58):

So whenever you go and you try to tear something down and build something completely new up, there's a lot of risk. We just saw that with GHCI know we're facing forward, but right now to use idiom, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. You can adjust it, you can tweak it, you can make changes to the program in a educated and a planned way that will get those metrics up, right? Once we define those KPIs, we as an industry will work with you, the government to achieve those. Today is a really, really important first https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=0 https://www.rev.com/ https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=1792.75 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=1854.58 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=1923.31 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=1978.73 step. We're getting together, we're communicating this can't be a one-time occurrence. We should be doing this multiple times a year. A year on multiple topics and together working on solutions and how we take the current program and we achieve the KPIs that you set for us to achieve. But again, that has a much, much lower risk of failure than anything else that you'd come up with.

(33:57):

If you come up, you try to single source contract this again, you saw what happened. I'm not saying it's going to happen again, but that risk is certainly there. If you continue working with the current program, you probably saw what happened this summer, you probably know what you're going to get. Moving is one of the most stressful things in people's lives, and so it has an outsize effect on morale and readiness and all the things that are really important to us and to you, this is one, it's not worth risking, the risk isn't worth the reward. We are here, we have our direct relationship with you and we want to work together to achieve the KPIs you set for us to achieve. We're here for that.

Speaker 14 (34:39):

So following up on your comments, sir, for you and anyone else, how would you recommend tweaking, completely changing however you want to structure the program. If you're sec def secretary of defense, you're making the decision on the option for going ahead, pressing forward, very curious to hear what input is from the room on hey, what's the optimum structure look like both for industry, for the service members, for military, what changes do you think need to be made to optimize performance going forward?

Speaker 13 (35:19):

And everybody else is going to have input on that. My comment to you is there's a lot of micro changes and I don't even want to go into them with you because they're so, they're about statistical ability and the claims score, all types of these little things that all out an aggregate to make a better program. But on the macro, what I'm essentially saying is stick with what you have that's proven and then go into the micros claims, all types of data entry. We can take you guys item by item and come up with a list of hundreds of different things that can be done to improve the program. It's going to require collaboration and it's going to require attention to detail. But I think that there's, when the SEC def comes to you with anything, you want to go back to him with something revolutionary.

(36:07):

You want to come back and you say, look, we did all this work and we have something. This is a great idea and I get it. Sticking with the tried and true program isn't sexy. You're not coming in there and you're going to blow his mind with a suggestion. But ultimately it is the most pragmatic choice. I mean, I'm telling you that right now. Everybody here is engaged. Everybody here is working towards a common goal and they want to work with you under any prime contractor or model. You are going to get people that are going to be disfranchised that won't want to support it. You have less control over rates, less control over the structure. It's a really risky proposition. If you guys decide to do it again, you decide to do it again. But we were very proactive when this was happening, when GHC was first formed of telling both you Congress the risk of what we thought was happening.

(37:02):

And we communicated with them throughout the way and when we told them, Hey look, there's an issue with pricing. There's an issue with SCA, we were the canaries in the coal mine. We predicted to them what was going to happen and it happened. And now we're sitting here again and we're trying, I think now this is my sole opinion, I'm not speaking for everybody, but we're being predictive again. And https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=0 https://www.rev.com/ https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=2037.83 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=2079.92 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=2119.64 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=2167.08 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=2222.13 the question is at this point, does it make sense to listen to us? I'm telling you, you got to really solid program. I would say the DP three for the amount of volume it moves is a world-class moving program.

We need to make some adjustments to make it better, but I don't think it needs to be trashed or overhauled.

Speaker 15 (37:44):

Yeah, Dan Bradley, international Association of Movers. And Mr. Frost, something you just said earlier about maybe you misinterpreted on the move manager agent question and so you wanted to clarify leads me to the question of you've used multiple times in your questions and the term commercial industry and I'm not sure that I understand now exactly what you meant by that because I'll tell you what I took that as for me was commercial practices that aren't happening in DP three that aren't happening in the military market. And if that was your intent, that's fine. I'm not a hundred percent sure though that maybe you're just using the word commercial industry to mean industry even what's going on in DP three because that would, I will tell you I try to spend some time on the white paper idea or the one page paper, and I'm not a commercial, right?

(38:38):

I don't have a background frankly in moving. I'm on the government side more, but certainly not commercial best practices, right? National accounts, COD, private moving, that type of thing. And so as I stood there, I had one day to try and work on that, which was Sunday and I had an open screen in front of my face and I was like, well what can I offer here because of commercial practices? I'm not so sure. So if that's not exactly what you meant, you meant more industry practices, I think that could change some of the inputs that may be that you've been looking for. And I know everything's on a tight timetable, but coming out of here and maybe giving this group and others now some feedback that we've heard from you and some of the statements that others have made. Again, I know there's not a lot of time between now and five September, but if there was a little bit more time for some one pagers, you might get some more feedback on what's some ideas that people can take out of here now based on things they heard and say, oh, I do have some ideas.

(39:37):

I wish I would've had the time to write that down and present to the task force.

Speaker 1 (39:41):

Yes sir. No, that's a great input and I appreciate that. My intent as an acquisition guy, the far kind of prescribes commercial services as a standard. What are the commercial services now I am familiar with the tender program. I was much more familiar with the GHC obviously in my role. I don't know the differences between the two in totality and I don't know what happens in the tender program that is a standard commercial practice or it's skewed to the government. It's not the first time I've ever heard that we're the most challenging customer. I totally get that. And I think Transcom acquisition would tell you at writ large, any industry we're into we're very challenging and I understand that. So that's a great point, sir. My intent is really to say you guys are the experts. So industry or commercial interchange 'em, what can we do to make this better for our service members?

(40:27):

If it's this or it's that or this reason or that reason, that's really the idea behind of what is out there that maybe we don't know. Because when I think of inventory or digital, I immediately go to what I said earlier, how does that filter down between multiple different and how does a small business interact with those, right? And if I do a large prime contract with six of you, what does that do to the other 300?

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That's where my mind goes as an acquisition professional, but I try to twist it to what's important for the JTF to understand to make this better for our service members.

Speaker 15 (40:58):

Yeah, I appreciate that clarification because again, I probably was focused on what's going on in the non DOD market and I think what's important is the industry as a whole, right? What are good ideas industry wise? And so I think I, anyway, and maybe others have focused on, they want to hear about what's going in the national account area because they think that's so much better than what's happening in DP three. And we actually wasted time and conversations on that because it was like, well, I'm not so sure there's a difference there. So I appreciate that clarification, Speaker 14 (41:27):

Roger. Thank you sir. Just real quick, following up on the comment about the written submissions, if anyone has something they want to submit, recommend, and you wanted to help inform the brief to the secretary on the fifth, recommend getting it to Mr. Frost within the next week

Speaker 8 (41:47):

Georgia Angle Trellis fine. So we've now kind of given you a lot of information here and when we go to other people, maybe our family members and try to explain our industry and the complexities within it and the different levels, they have a lot of questions, their kind of feedback. I just want to make sure we're all very intelligent, but there isn't that deer in the headlight look at times. So I want to maybe address a specific one just to make sure that we're all on the same page when they were referring to the scoring on the pickup on time pickup and then the comment was made, it's actually better than that.

And it goes back to something as simple as it's judged based on the date you're able to put into the system. You have time zones worldwide. So if nothing is automatically going in there and you can't backdate things.

(42:45):

So I think when we get down into the weeds of this simple things like that and our current program will give you better information going forward to produce to what you've got to do and give us the feedback also. So when we talk about this communication back and forth here, smaller working groups on specific items, because I think you might have questions coming back to us that I think is really important, a conduit that you can ask your questions and clarification and just want to make sure that you are on the same page. You understand a discount of the tariff versus the tariff percentage change. So little nuances that sound reasonable as we're just rambling here, but we want to make sure you're understanding that too. So we'd encourage any questions you guys might have.

Speaker 7 (43:49):

Hello again, Hal Crawford, Gerald moving. I've been sitting there back there thinking, and I hope I'm not wrong about this, but we have carriers out here all TSPs and they have carriers that are porters, et cetera. But we hire these people to manage our authority for you to take care of you, to get more shipments and get things moved around. These people that we hire are our move managers and our QC office. In your mind that looks out for us that says you're doing wrong, you need to do this. Contact TMO, contact whoever, write this letter. That's why we hire them besides helping us be a liaison to you.

That's the national forwardings, that's the tmms, the set, all those people. That's how this system works because that way we all interact together and talk to each other between each carrier and each TMM https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=0 https://www.rev.com/ https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=2458.9 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=2487.58 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=2507.48 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=2565.74 https://www.rev.com/app/transcript/Njg5YmVkMTg1MjM3MTQ1ZGZiOGYxMzY5WDZUeV9JUkZ4VWkz/o/VEMwOTAzMDE3MDMz?ts=2629.4 and national. That's why it works right now. And I really believe if you come off with a system that we have now, you can make it better. There's no doubt in my mind, and I've been coming here at Scott Air Force base since 1968 moving furniture, so that's a few years I've been there. So please, this is a good system.

Speaker 16 (45:34):

AR and hanock from Ark, again, I wrote something down, jotted it down, so I apologize, I don't normally read stuff, but hearing this, one of the things that has me a little bit concerned is some misunderstanding about the original GHC and I think it morphed into something. What if you decide to go a different route than DP three? What I think you need to understand is to be successful, a move contractor needs support of everyone in this room and beyond. It can't be done without the capacity that exists in the marketplace because, and as it deteriorates, we fall further and further at risk that this isn't going to work. Whether it's DP three something offshoot of GH HC or something else. Okay, we need the capacity. It doesn't work. Somehow that got lost in translation in this whole process, tricks that shortcut, they don't work.

(46:32):

So if you're seeing tricks that shortcut it, I'll never forget, I homes save coming to me and telling me that we can consolidate loads, we're going to lower costs. The industry already consolidates loads. It was ridiculous. I mean it was one of those things you're cutting out parts of industry. We need industry, it's not going to work without 'em. In the end, the contractor must provide enhanced technology and services. If you're going to go one contractor route, they got to be able to provide services to this entire industry. It doesn't mean that we displace somebody's great services.