When PCSing....

shellybell15 · July 2011

Once you have orders about how long does it take to get the movers (if you're having the military move you) to your house to pack things up? DH is in OCS right now and he has not received his official orders yet. A fellow CO just scheduled his move and it is going to take them 3 weeks to be able to get to his house. This seems excessive to me, so I'm just wondering what you ladies have experienced. TIA!

LemonLover33 · July 2011

It really depends on when you are moving and how many other families are moving at the same time. After my husband had hard copy orders, he went to the TMO office that day and scheduled our move. The earliest date was four weeks from that date (three weeks after graduation). But, we move during peak PCSing season. So, he just took leave and we visited family and cleaned out our apartment during that time.

tlalli7106 · July 2011

We got our order orders to San Diego in February 2009, we took a week house hunting in April 2009 to buy our house and the movers came and we left June 2009...we're Navy so not sure if this helps!

ladybugpjb · July 2011

I think it depends on where you are. We had a lot of time in between when DH received his orders and when he had to report to his next station. We pretty much were able to pick the date that we wanted to move out - not sure if that's because there weren't a lot of people PCSing at the same time or because we were able to schedule it pretty far in advance. That was my first PCS, so I don't know how typical it was.

Ilumine · July 2011

Gosh, this is not a snark by any stretch of the imagination...because I had the same thoughts for my first PCS (luckily, I lived next to the TMO Chief), but you really need to use this as a learning lesson when it comes to the military.

At any given base, there are fifty to a couple hundred (and even more at the big bases) AD servicemembers PCSing out. During the height of the PCS season, which is after school lets out, that almost doubles. That also means that for every AD leaving, there is a replacement coming in.

And there are only SO MANY people/resources available to handle this all.

Your base may be a first come, first serve. Or there may be a priority system, depending on the NLT arrival date. Or they may put those leaving the base housing first, given the high demand for on base housing. Or there may only be two contracted moving companies, who only have so many open slots, given they may also do civilian moves as well as government.

But either way, the lesson here is that military life has some of the most crazy variables you will ever run into. AND that these variables WILL be impacted by the BASE you live on, so what may happen at one base, may not occurr at another.

Never sweat the deatails that are managed by the Military because it will just make you crazy. Learn to work with them, be proactive over the things that you actually do have control over and enjoy the fact that in the end, you are not the one packing.

Smudges*Mom · July 2011

I think it really depends on how busy things are with other moves. During PCS Season (May through August), unless you've already arranged your dates, you get stuck with what is left. I've known people who had to hire their own movers or do a fully DITY because there weren't military contracted movers available.

mrskristend821 · July 2011

Like everyone else said, it really depends on how busy they are. This is def the busy season for PCS. From personal experience, my advicec is to finalize your dates as early as possible.

We left Ft Jackson the first week of May and had no problem getting everything packed and picked up on exactly the date we wanted with only a week's notice to the movers. DH took all 30 days of leave, and we split it between vacation and visiting his family (mine is close to Ft Jackson). DH for some reason couldn't seem to decide what day he wanted to leave from visiting his fam, so he told the movers a range of a few days that we'd be returning to Ft Campbell. He was told this would be no problem, but when he called back 2 weeks prior to our move date, they were booked solid for 4 weeks.

We had to come back to Ft Campbell anyway because DH had to report, so we lived in our empty house for 2 weeks. I was bored out of my mind, but it could have been worse. We borrowed tons of stuff from ACS lending closet that made it livable.

Mereou12 · July 2011

It totally depends on the base, time of year (TMO is *much* busier during the summer), etc.

For our last PCS, we had orders a few months out, but DH wasn't even allowed to make an appt with TMO until 1 month before our PCS date. They finally scheduled us, but gave us absurd dates (pack out on a Thursday, pick it up the next Tuesday, and deliver 3 hours away 1.5 weeks later)...we didn't know our exact pack/pick-up/delivery dates until about a week before.

When we PCSed from Okinawa 3.5 years ago, we got orders and scheduled our pack-out in less than a week.

shellybell15 · July 2011

Thanks guys. I knew there would be lots of variables, I was just hoping that 3 weeks was not the norm. Guess is it more common than I thought during this busy time. We have a lot going on that I was hoping the move would be the easy part.

MyHusbandMyHero · July 2011

Smudges*Mom:
I think it really depends on how busy things are with other moves. During PCS Season (May through August), unless you've already arranged your dates, you get stuck with what is left. I've known people who had to hire their own movers or do a fully DITY because there weren't military contracted movers available.

This! -- Also, I see you have 2 LOs but if you can manage to get family help.. You can make quite a bit of money doing a DITY or even a partial DITY.

Junebug060609 · July 2011

We scheduled our move for a few weeks out from when we got a copy of the orders. TMO apparently could've done it sooner (they seemed really happy we were planning that far out), but we couldn't use the military clause to break our lease until around the date we picked. We were living in a pretty military-heavy area at the time (Hampton Roads, VA) and they packed us up in late August of last year.

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