Perfect Storm Article Elicits Comments

Our recent post about the reactions to the peak season issues has drawn some interest, and we wanted to share a few of the comments we have received about the article.

John Johnson, Chief of Personal Property Branch at SDDC, contacted us to make a couple of points about the peak season problems. Since the article outlined a couple of the Services’ theories about the cause of the problems, John wanted to share his thoughts on that question from SDDC’s perspective.

While there are no shortage of theories and contributing factors, we believe it directly relates to lack of coordination between TSPs and local Agents, driver/equipment shortage, unexpected increase in commercial business, and the first peak season in DPS (blackout dates, shipment distribution, visibility of capacity, etc.).

John also pointed out that SDDC had issued a message on May 28th, when they first saw signs of problems with missed pickups. Since the message was sent as an email to TSPs and PPSOs, and not posted on the SDDC website, we did not have access to it and cannot post  a link to the full message. However, here are some excerpts from the message that was sent to TSPs.

There have been several shipments where the TSP experienced difficulties in providing the contractual services that appear to be from lack of visibility over local agent capacity.  We encourage and expect each TSP who accepts a shipment to communicate with the member or designated rep throughout the shipment to ensure they are aware of all pack/pickup/delivery dates.

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It’s very important that you manage your volume to ensure saturations are blacked out and that you coordinate movement of all accepted shipments.

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The bottom line is TSPs and PPSOs need to work together with the member and provide the world class customer support required.  We solicit your support in working through and understanding how these processes affect our customers as the challenges of decreased capacity, new processes and higher shipment volumes impact us all.

We also received an email from Zac Nash, the Air Force Chaplain whose blog we quoted about his personal experience with a problematic peak season move. He wanted us to know that after a discussion with SDDC, he made some updates to his blog entry, and we promised we would share those on this blog. You can view his latest update on the bottom of his post, under the heading “HUGE! UPDATE: 7-6-10 SUBJECT DPS”.

If you have any comments about this update, or the previous Perfect Storm article, please feel free to leave them below.

Related Posts

1. “Perfect Storm” of Peak Season Problems Draws Responses - July 1st, 2010
2. SDDC Comments on DPS - October 30th, 2006
3. The Calm Before the Storm - September 30th, 2011