Congress probes military cargo moving air vs. land

Congress probes military cargo moving air vs. land Why move military cargo by air when ground transportation will suffice?
   That’s the question posed by two members of Congress who complain that a conflict between Defense Department and Air Force regulations on moving cargo “is causing a waste of taxpayer funds.”
   “No clear justification for such practice has been provided,” write Reps. Solomon Ortiz, D-Texas, and Jo Ann Davis, R-Va. in a letter to John Young, the principal deputy secretary in the office of the under secretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.
   “We are very concerned that senior officials in the Department of Defense have been made aware of the conflict in regulatory guidance for the past two years, but have taken no substantive action to respond to those concerned,” Ortiz and Davis said. They are, respectively, the chairman and ranking member of the readiness subcommittee of the House Committee on Armed Services.
   Ortiz and Davis claim a requirement by the Air Mobility Command, that “each shipment must be moved, at least in part, by air,” drives up cost. As an example, they point to shipments moving cargo from Corpus Christi, Texas, to Lexington, Okla., by an unnamed shipper. A decision to move it by air rather than truck “nearly doubled the costs for one shipper” from 92 cents per pound to $1.75 per pound, resulting in an increase in about “$250,000 in additional annualized costs to the taxpayer for this one DoD shipper.”
   Slightly different figures were cited in a request to the U.S. Transportation Command from a staffer on the House committee. There it is said a single air shipment cost $775 to move by air versus $379 if it had moved by truck.
   The committee said instead of freight being placed on trucks and driven 576 miles to Lexington, it was ping-ponged around the country 2,243 miles — by truck to Houston, by plane to Ft. Wayne, Ind., then by air back to Dallas, and then by truck to Lexington.
   Of course, many air cargo shipments move indirectly over hub-and-spoke networks, but the committee notes the shipment was a second-day delivery, “an easy one-day drive by truck.”
   The shippers, forwarders and carriers involved in the example are not identified, but Kitty Hawk Inc. maintains an air cargo hub in Ft. Wayne and a regional hub in Dallas. Many forwarders and integrated carriers –including Pilot Air Freight Inc., Eagle Global Logistics Inc., AIT Freight Systems Inc., Exel, DHL, BAX, UPS and Expeditors, use its services as does the U.S. Postal Service.
   The U.S. Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) notes, however, that the rates it pays are based on shortest highway distance between two points, not the total distance freight travels.
   It also said the decision on which mode and carrier to use is based on the required delivery date.
   Discussing the decision by the transportation officer (TO) who booked the Corpus Christi-to-Lexington freight, USTRANSCOM told Congress that the shipment “was considered less than a truckload; the DTR Part II, DoD Standard Transit Time Guide for less-than-truckload shipments is three days. In order to ensure arrival on time, the TO chose and paid for air service.”
   It was not clear if all LTL cargo moved by USTRANSCOM is moved by air.