A mover rolls household goods into a truck at Fort Knox, Ky., Aug. 4, 2021. (Jenn Dehaan/U.S. Army)
The Defense Department on Wednesday ended the troubled contract with a private firm tasked with overhauling the movement of household goods for service members and their families.
The contract with HomeSafe Alliance was terminated for cause due to its “demonstrated inability to fulfill their obligations and deliver high quality moves to Service members,” the Pentagon said in a news release Wednesday.
The release did not detail specific failures by HomeSafe, but the firm has been plagued with complaints of late pickups and deliveries for months, prompting the Army in April to entirely suspend moves through HomeSafe.
In November 2021, U.S. Transportation Command awarded a $20 billion contract to the Houston-based firm to handle relocation management work that until then was being done by more than 900 commercial entities for roughly 350,000 moves a year.
HomeSafe is a joint venture between Tier One Relocation and KBR, formerly Kellogg Brown & Root.
HomeSafe did not immediately respond Wednesday to an email requesting comment on the termination.
The firm was tasked with overseeing all subcontracts for packing, trucking, shipping and storage of goods in moves under the Global Household Goods Contract, or GHC.
Moves under GHC began in earnest in January but were so troubled that several U.S. senators launched inquiries into the contract.
In May, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered sweeping changes to how GHC was being implemented, creating the Permanent Change of Station Joint Task Force to more closely oversee the overhaul.
Transportation Command’s legacy tender-of-service system for relocations had continued to operate in tandem with GHC, with the expectation that the legacy system would be essentially phased out this year.
In May, Hegseth ordered Transportation Command to “fully leverage” both GHC and the legacy program to handle the summer peak season for PCS moves.
Hegseth has named Army Maj. Gen. Lance Curtis to lead the PCS task force, according to the Pentagon news release.
Curtis is the commander of the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command.
Katie McMichael, executive director of Movers for America, a coalition that has pushed back on GHC’s implementation, commended the Defense Department for ending the contract in an emailed statement Wednesday.
“For many months, military families and those who move them have sounded the alarm about the failure of the GHC rollout,” she said.
“We welcome Secretary Hegseth’s swift action to course correct, and we urge the newly established PCS Joint Task Force to continue collaborating with experienced industry representatives as plans for the strategic path forward are now underway.”
