This post is long overdue but I realized I need to post it here to warn others, to tell a good story, and see if anyone has any ideas around this one.
The short version:
You can only ship 600# to P'cola unless you have follow-on orders. Which is stupid. But works out because dumb NAVY will pay you per diem.
The long version:
I moved down to P'cola from Kansas in September. My XO and staff constantly educated me on how clever doing DITY moves early in your career for a big pay-day can be so I took the bait.
Background: If you do not have "follow-on orders" which indicate where you will be doing Primary training, your orders are NOT PCS orders. But they sure look like it with the words PCS plastered all over them. Instead, you are TDY in Pensacola until your orders for Primary are cut. This means you are not entitled to move the normal allotted 10k#, instead only 600# of HHG can come with you. Which would have meant.... my closet. And yea, I'm a guy.
Well like I said I was stationed in Kansas. Our nearest Navy base is Fort Leavenworth and oh yea, that's definitely NOT Navy. We took a trip to this Army Fort for our PCS brief from the Personal Property Procurement Office. This office was one of many along my way that mistakenly omitted the fact that we were not entitled a full move, and schedule us as if we were. They scheduled my roomy for a full-on 2k# PCS move and set me up for my money-hungry DITY move. I estimated I would move 2000# of stuff the 1000 miles to Pcola. Using a handy little table they provided me with (and I memorized) I came to find that, with this estimate, this meant over $2000 would be coming my way, before taxes. I got excited. I bought a big screen.
****Side Note....A rough estimate for how much money you're getting paid for a DITY move depends on the weight you move and the distance you move it. You will get paid 95% of what they'd pay a professional....
That means for a move of 1000 miles you will get paid between $0.75 and $1.25 per pound moved. The return is diminishing to discourage those of us with LOTS of weight from doing DITY moves. A person with only 500# can expect to get paid close to $1.25 / pound while someone with over 8000# will get paid much less, around $0.75 / pound.
Also, this pay-rate is based on what range of weight your move falls within. Your highest pay bracket comes between 500-999#, with the rate diminishing as mentioned above. To make the most money you would want to be at the top of the lowest bracket. For example, you would benefit by transporting 999# at $1.25/pound as opposed to 1000# at $1.10/pound. The range for these factors increased in multiples of two, (great for ease of memorization) starting from 500; something like the following:
500-999 , 1000- 1999, 2000-3999, 4000-7999, 8000 - ....
In the end this is pretty trivial; "mental masturbation," my engineering professor would have called it. But neat if your into this kinda thing.
******End side note.
Where was I?
Oh yea, I bought a big screen. Whoops.
September rolled around, I had my counseling paperwork from Fort Leavenworth in hand, and I rented the biggest tow-behind U-haul I could find and loaded it chalk-full of crap. 3000# worth of crap to be approximate. I was excited cuz I was getting paid. To those of you not keeping up... something to the tune of over $3000 (before taxes). Along the way I burned money on expensive hotels in every college town I knew friends in (tax right-off) and had a blast. Nice hotels ended up being worth it even without the nice paycheck to write them off against but that's another topic. Things were going great. My truck even made the trip!
Great that is...Until I got to the PSD and the Personal Property Office in Pcola. I limped my truck in after unloading my 3/4 ton U-haul, the transmission in shambles, but still grinning ear to ear expecting my legit hard-work to pay off as I pick up my fat "promotion-check." Promotion? You know the one they give you when you transition from the adolescent life as a stash ensign waiting it out at ROTC to the grind-it-out career of an a-pool veteran? I was wrong.
Turns out I might as well have stored that U-haul at Mom's house and weighed the backseat of my truck. Apparently we Ensigns don't have previous-lives or "personal belongings!"
Uniforms and toiletries of 3oz or 600#, whichever is less, in a plastic bad of course, 'ok' ...
Big screen bought prematurely with DITY move bonus-check, not 'ok.'
So they broke the bad news. As SNA's (note SNFOs stop reading here [or way above], none of this applies to you) our ACC code is 341, temporary flying status (which it clearly states on your orders, right below PERMANENT duty station, surrounded by instructions on how to correctly complete your PCS move). My mistake. The 10k# rule does not apply to us until we have orders to Primary. No big DITY check for me until I move all my stuff again, to Corpus. Or Vance
.
My roommate who unknowingly swindled Leavenworth to ship her HHGs to Pcola, you ask? She can expect a bill in something around a year for the move.
But wait! My roommate and I were MISCOUNCELED! In other words, since Fort Leavenworth's head was further up their..... than my own... there might still be a chance. In fact, since it wasn't my roommate’s fault, it was Leavenworth's, when she is billed she'll be able to dispute the charge and it should get dropped, no harm and a free move for her! But for me? Well turns out the Navy's a little more stingy when it comes to cutting a check vs. forgiving a debt. No matter that I was miscounceled in the same way she was, I can expect no reimbursement.
And the kicker. By sending us here TDY some people (with follow-on orders) are able to collect per diem. Those living in the Pcola area and willing to move once they finish API and head over to Whiting will collect a fat per diem check for their whole API/IFS/A-pool "Battle of the Midway" experience.
Rumor has that even those of us transitioning to Corpus can try and collect the same check when we arrive there. So while one person is to tight on the purse to just PCS us here for permanent duty, another gets screwed out of way more money having to cut unnecessary per diem checks to Aviators living in permanent housing for months waiting for log jams of students to clear out....In fact, I heard at my stash job one of the a-pool veterans before me, that hung out for just about 6 months med-down before moving on, collected over a $10k per diem check. Now this is great resource management! And all I have to show for it is a sob story about how I tried to game the system with a huge DITY move and ended up short a couple extra Armani suits. Like I really wear Armani.
Oh well... at least I have a big screen. On credit. I'm off to try and fill out some per diem paperwork at PCS. Maybe I'll catch Uncle Sam blinking.
The short version:
You can only ship 600# to P'cola unless you have follow-on orders. Which is stupid. But works out because dumb NAVY will pay you per diem.
The long version:
I moved down to P'cola from Kansas in September. My XO and staff constantly educated me on how clever doing DITY moves early in your career for a big pay-day can be so I took the bait.
Background: If you do not have "follow-on orders" which indicate where you will be doing Primary training, your orders are NOT PCS orders. But they sure look like it with the words PCS plastered all over them. Instead, you are TDY in Pensacola until your orders for Primary are cut. This means you are not entitled to move the normal allotted 10k#, instead only 600# of HHG can come with you. Which would have meant.... my closet. And yea, I'm a guy.
Well like I said I was stationed in Kansas. Our nearest Navy base is Fort Leavenworth and oh yea, that's definitely NOT Navy. We took a trip to this Army Fort for our PCS brief from the Personal Property Procurement Office. This office was one of many along my way that mistakenly omitted the fact that we were not entitled a full move, and schedule us as if we were. They scheduled my roomy for a full-on 2k# PCS move and set me up for my money-hungry DITY move. I estimated I would move 2000# of stuff the 1000 miles to Pcola. Using a handy little table they provided me with (and I memorized) I came to find that, with this estimate, this meant over $2000 would be coming my way, before taxes. I got excited. I bought a big screen.
****Side Note....A rough estimate for how much money you're getting paid for a DITY move depends on the weight you move and the distance you move it. You will get paid 95% of what they'd pay a professional....
That means for a move of 1000 miles you will get paid between $0.75 and $1.25 per pound moved. The return is diminishing to discourage those of us with LOTS of weight from doing DITY moves. A person with only 500# can expect to get paid close to $1.25 / pound while someone with over 8000# will get paid much less, around $0.75 / pound.
Also, this pay-rate is based on what range of weight your move falls within. Your highest pay bracket comes between 500-999#, with the rate diminishing as mentioned above. To make the most money you would want to be at the top of the lowest bracket. For example, you would benefit by transporting 999# at $1.25/pound as opposed to 1000# at $1.10/pound. The range for these factors increased in multiples of two, (great for ease of memorization) starting from 500; something like the following:
500-999 , 1000- 1999, 2000-3999, 4000-7999, 8000 - ....
In the end this is pretty trivial; "mental masturbation," my engineering professor would have called it. But neat if your into this kinda thing.
******End side note.
Where was I?
Oh yea, I bought a big screen. Whoops.
September rolled around, I had my counseling paperwork from Fort Leavenworth in hand, and I rented the biggest tow-behind U-haul I could find and loaded it chalk-full of crap. 3000# worth of crap to be approximate. I was excited cuz I was getting paid. To those of you not keeping up... something to the tune of over $3000 (before taxes). Along the way I burned money on expensive hotels in every college town I knew friends in (tax right-off) and had a blast. Nice hotels ended up being worth it even without the nice paycheck to write them off against but that's another topic. Things were going great. My truck even made the trip!
Great that is...Until I got to the PSD and the Personal Property Office in Pcola. I limped my truck in after unloading my 3/4 ton U-haul, the transmission in shambles, but still grinning ear to ear expecting my legit hard-work to pay off as I pick up my fat "promotion-check." Promotion? You know the one they give you when you transition from the adolescent life as a stash ensign waiting it out at ROTC to the grind-it-out career of an a-pool veteran? I was wrong.
Turns out I might as well have stored that U-haul at Mom's house and weighed the backseat of my truck. Apparently we Ensigns don't have previous-lives or "personal belongings!"
Uniforms and toiletries of 3oz or 600#, whichever is less, in a plastic bad of course, 'ok' ...
Big screen bought prematurely with DITY move bonus-check, not 'ok.'
So they broke the bad news. As SNA's (note SNFOs stop reading here [or way above], none of this applies to you) our ACC code is 341, temporary flying status (which it clearly states on your orders, right below PERMANENT duty station, surrounded by instructions on how to correctly complete your PCS move). My mistake. The 10k# rule does not apply to us until we have orders to Primary. No big DITY check for me until I move all my stuff again, to Corpus. Or Vance
. My roommate who unknowingly swindled Leavenworth to ship her HHGs to Pcola, you ask? She can expect a bill in something around a year for the move.
But wait! My roommate and I were MISCOUNCELED! In other words, since Fort Leavenworth's head was further up their..... than my own... there might still be a chance. In fact, since it wasn't my roommate’s fault, it was Leavenworth's, when she is billed she'll be able to dispute the charge and it should get dropped, no harm and a free move for her! But for me? Well turns out the Navy's a little more stingy when it comes to cutting a check vs. forgiving a debt. No matter that I was miscounceled in the same way she was, I can expect no reimbursement.
And the kicker. By sending us here TDY some people (with follow-on orders) are able to collect per diem. Those living in the Pcola area and willing to move once they finish API and head over to Whiting will collect a fat per diem check for their whole API/IFS/A-pool "Battle of the Midway" experience.
Rumor has that even those of us transitioning to Corpus can try and collect the same check when we arrive there. So while one person is to tight on the purse to just PCS us here for permanent duty, another gets screwed out of way more money having to cut unnecessary per diem checks to Aviators living in permanent housing for months waiting for log jams of students to clear out....In fact, I heard at my stash job one of the a-pool veterans before me, that hung out for just about 6 months med-down before moving on, collected over a $10k per diem check. Now this is great resource management! And all I have to show for it is a sob story about how I tried to game the system with a huge DITY move and ended up short a couple extra Armani suits. Like I really wear Armani.
Oh well... at least I have a big screen. On credit. I'm off to try and fill out some per diem paperwork at PCS. Maybe I'll catch Uncle Sam blinking.
