The experience can turn life upside-down not only for the active military member, but especially for family members. The situation can result in even more concerns when a member of the family has special needs.

For servicemembers concerned that the military would not consider their family’s needs and requirements, they can rest assured that those concerns are not taken lightly when PCS assignments are declared.

“If you are assigned a place that is remote and doesn’t have the care required, the government or the military may exclude you from going to that because you’re not able to take care of the (family member),” says Michael J. Meese, president of the American Armed Forces Mutual Aid Association (AAFMAA), a nonprofit financial solutions provider for military families, and a 32-year veteran of the United States Army who retired at the rank of Brigadier General.

When a servicemember is assigned a new post, two of the first steps he or she should take according to Meese is to let the military know of a potential situation involving a family member who needs special education needs, care or medical treatment during their time in the new location. They should also have their current healthcare provider check with peers at the new location to ensure that proper care is available for the spouse or child that needs it.

Family of servicemembers who require special needs can enroll in the Exceptional Family Member Program (EFMP) which helps provide the support for managing care and services.

“It’s really important to be upfront with the military to make the best decision overall, because the military doesn’t want you to go somewhere where you’re worried about your spouse or child needing appropriate care,” Meese said. “They’re far better off having you go to a place where you know your spouse or child is getting the appropriate care.”

According to the website MilitaryOneSource, EFMP provides family support with referrals and case-management, coordinates enrollment in the program and also coordinates assignments while ensuring that medical and educational needs are met.

“The exceptional family member policy ranges for everything from family members needing wheelchairs, who are dyslexic, needing an individualized educational program, any issues,” Meese said. “The support overseas for most departments is really good, but they may or may not have specialized capabilities to be able to take care of some particular needs.”

Making sure the family is comfortable making a PCS is important for servicemembers and it’s especially important that special needs family members are comfortable in their new surroundings.

As a veteran of about a dozen PCS moves during his military career, Meese encourages servicemembers to take leave to get family settled and comfortable before starting a new assignment.

“A huge advantage of the military is they get 30 days of leave every year,” Meese said. “Don’t shorten yourself or your family with leave. I left Germany (on a PCS) on a Thursday and started working my next job the following Monday. That’s not the way you should do it. I should have taken time to make sure that my family was settled in.”

One more important step when making a PCS with special needs family members is to confirm that all insurance needs are met. Investing in a modest term-life insurance policy is worth considering in case of an emergency, Meese said.

“They may need additional insurance (to what’s offered from the military),” Meese said. “If the spouse doesn’t have their own insurance, they may need some additional insurance if something were to happen to them, because being able to take care of special needs children is obviously a very expensive thing to do.”

It was a different story in 2016, when the Morenos had a family with three children to bring along, find schools for them to attend, and get them on board with a move that was going upend their lives.

“There were mixed emotions because one kid was not interested in going to Japan at all,” says Moreno, now retired from the Army and living in Arizona, where he works as the Global Initiatives Coordinator for the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University. “The other two kids were very excited about this new adventure. There were mixed emotions, but the one who was not very interested finally gave in.”

While military members are given plenty of advance notice before receiving their orders that it’s time to move elsewhere, it can be a stressful time. While Department of Defense officials are available as well as other military organizations to help keep things in order, it can help servicemembers to form a checklist of things that are essential to take care of when they first receive word that orders are taking servicemembers overseas.

Moreno and his family took the experience in stride and made it a positive.

“It’s a missed opportunity when people are there and don’t take advantage of it and explore places when you’re getting a free ticket,” Moreno says.

While it can be a moment for military families to travel the world, the servicemember are assigned to a new part of the world because they have a job to do. To help with the initial process, servicemembers should not be afraid to consult with peers and military organizations to help with the process.

Some sites to access include:

• Plan My Move. This Department of Defense resource can help servicemembers design a personalized checklist of aspects of the move to consider. For Moreno, two of important parts of the move were securing transportation for a Great Dane and finding health care for one of his special needs children.

“Get educated on the cost of living, the allowance you’ll get when you get over there, and all those other things will start to come into place,” he said.

• TRICARE can help you find doctors and plans that work best for overseas moves.
• When packing for your move, it is important to be in contact with your local transportation office to determine a strategy.

Moreno described himself as a minimalist, so the decision to take some things and leave others behind was easier than it might be for others. They chose to take things like bicycles and camping gear that may not have been as easy to find overseas. Also important for the Morenos was to secure what they wanted to keep behind.

They left behind appliances and a motorcycle behind in Virginia, where the items waited for them to return from Japan.

“You can choose it for the military to store it or you could choose to store it for yourself, and they’ll pay for it either way,” said Moreno, who also chose to take personal items like photos and other things of family value and clothing.

Moreno said it is important for servicemembers to know the restrictions of the place they’re relocating. For example, some PCS moves only allow servicemembers to bring along half of their belongings, or there is a weight restriction for the number of items moved.

Vehicles can also be a challenge due to license and registration and emission requirements in certain countries.

Today, she has been married to her husband for 15 years, in which time she has been through several moves, most recently back to Germany, which was the site of Vogels’ first PCS shortly after they were married and where they returned to in July. They did not have children for the first move, but now have two under the age of 8. That dynamic changes her priorities, but doesn’t change her spirit when the time comes for the Vogels to move on while her husband serves the country.

“I am a glass half full kind of gal. You will barely see me have a bad day,” Vogel said. “During PCS, during everything, you have to give yourself some grace and hope everybody else pulls you along, because it is an incredibly stressful time.”

One of the biggest challenges that spouses find while relocating during a PCS assignment is finding work. Fortunately for Vogel, that’s a hurdle she overcame during her very first PCS move with her husband to Germany.

When she arrived at Ramstein 15 years ago, she started the process of seeking employment and checked in at the United Service Organizations office, or USO. She walked through the doors cold, eager to start her new life, in a new country.

“I wasn’t really sure what to expect,” she said of the USO. “But they were just the friendliest people there.”

The USO happened to have a job opening, which she filled and led to her current position as the senior manager for military spouse and family programs. In her role, she helps families like hers adjust to life in the military, like moves.

Other challenges for military spouses is to fit in with their new communities, find friends and pursue hobbies. During her first time in Germany she started “Coffee Connections” that helps military spouses find friends in their new homes. It’s a program that’s now extended to 95 locations across the world through the USO.

“It’s so beautiful, because moving back here, I can go to the USO and meet friends and find people who are in the same boat,” she said.

More than 400,000 service members make PCS moves each year. So while the practice may seem common, the initial moves can be daunting for a spouse making the moves for the first time, whether it’s across the country, across the world, or across the state.

Vogel encourages spouses to stay positive, and know that the “dust will settle.”

She describes the role of the spouse in a PCS as the “Chief of everything. The service member is going to have a couple of days where you can get things squared away and then they have to go back to their job. We, as the spouse, have to help with the kids, get everything organized, set up schedules, get the house in place, unpack the boxes. There’s a lot to it.”

“A lady called and said they hadn’t found their yellow python. They didn’t want to concern anyone, she said, but it may have gotten in the couch that was packed up days ago,” said Brittany Brooks, vice president of Conser Group, a moving company based in Florida.

When the truck’s doors opened, animal control was at the ready. And indeed, there was the python, still alive and sealed into the couch by a thick layer of paper and plastic wrap.

While not every military family owns a snake, the anecdote highlights an important point for those making a permanent change of station move this year: Communication is key.

As you start arranging an upcoming move, talk to your moving company about your specific needs, any extenuating circumstances, pets, schedules and more. The more information, the better — even if you think it’s unimportant, Brooks said.

“Share it with us. We’ll decipher what’s need-to-know,” Brooks said in an interview with Military Times about this year’s moving season. “Having that proactive, organized conversation from the beginning is really crucial.”

Organization and planning are at the core of a successful relocation for troops and moving companies alike. Movers are now preparing to tackle peak PCS season, which runs from May 15 to Aug. 31 each year.

“We are doing everything we can from a resource perspective,” Brooks said. “Many of us are currently in hiring stages, in training stages with our crews, fine-tuning our equipment [and] making sure we’ve got the materials pre-ordered and ready to go.”

“When the bookings start to flow through for the military side, I think we’ll find that capacity is ready,” Brooks said in March.

Historically, more than 120,000 shipments — about 40% of the annual total for Defense Department’s household goods program — are moved during peak season, according to officials with U.S. Transportation Command, the organization in charge of shipping troops’ belongings around the world. In 2022, for example, the military logged nearly 303,000 household goods shipments.

“We are anticipating similar numbers for this year,” officials told Military Times in an email.

Shipments don’t equal the number of moves because some service members send out multiple shipments over the course of a single PCS.

Industry’s capacity to facilitate those moves in 2024 — such as the number of available trucks and drivers, and workers to pack and unpack everything from clothing to cars — looks similar to 2023, said Dan Bradley, vice president for government and military relations at the International Association of Movers, which represents about 2,000 companies in 170 countries.

“The private and corporate markets are still slower, so that competition is probably down right now for resources” such as drivers and equipment, said Bradley, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. “With those other markets being down, I think people are generally hungry for shipments, so they’re looking forward to peak season, and looking forward to getting shipments started.”

U.S. Transportation Command, for its part, has tried to improve the moving process for troops and their families. For instance, the command aims to cap the number of moves at 9,000 per week during peak season to avoid overloading the moving industry and allowing companies to better plan for the summer demand.

TRANSCOM has also stressed to the moving industry the importance of communicating with their entire supply chain and military customers, only taking on shipments they can safely handle, and proactively reaching out to customers when things don’t go according to plan. A service member’s local transportation office can also help set clear expectations about the moving process to help families prepare.

Many of the military branches have started offering more flexibility around when troops must report to their new duty stations. A service member’s current chain of command can often work with the unit they’ll join at the new location to smooth out any delays in arrival, according to TRANSCOM.

TRANSCOM is in the midst of implementing a new contract aimed at fixing many of the longstanding problems that have plagued service members when shipping household goods, like pickup delays, lost and broken belongings, difficulties with filing claims and more.

This spring, the command will start moving household goods under a single manager for a limited number of troops at five locations as part of the new contract. About 99% of service members making a move this peak season will remain under the current system.

Secrets to successful military moves

For military families, successful moves take weeks of planning and organizing.

The common element movers see when successfully shipping household goods is organization, Conser Group’s Brooks said.

Culling items to discard, donate or sell will help make a shipment lighter, especially for those who are nearing the authorized weight limit. Aside from the physical aspect of moving your belongings, finding housing, new schools and a myriad of other needs are a big part of the process, too, not to mention spouse employment.

Since spouses take on much of the burden of preparing for a move, “we need to make sure we’re as easy to do business with as possible,” Brooks said. That includes flagging resources like DOD’s new pet PCS travel reimbursement, which offers troops up to $2,000 to move a dog or cat to or from overseas; or $550 if moving within the lower 48 states.

TRANSCOM recommends service members check out the PCS resources and tools available on Military OneSource, which covers dozens of tips on everything from preparing the home and belongings before the moving crew arrives, to what to do in case of loss or damage to your property.

If military customers have questions or concerns about shipping personal property, they should call their local transportation office. Phone numbers are available via the Military OneSource installations locator.

Brooks recommends putting together a binder, whether physical or electronic, with documents related to the move, relevant contact information and TRANSCOM resources.

PCS tips and tricks

• When contacted by the moving company assigned to your move, ask whether that person will be your point of contact through the pre-move survey, packing, loading, delivery and claims, if needed. Ask if you can call or text with questions.
• Talk to that representative up front, before the move, about your expectations at delivery. You’re entitled to request that the company fully unpack your belongings at the destination, but let them know in advance. “If it’s a large enough shipment, we may need to proactively schedule a second day to come out and help reassemble the rest of the furniture and take away boxes,” Brooks said.
• Collect medications and personal documents for each family member; packed suitcases; valuables such as jewelry; and other important items, such as purses, wallets, credit cards, cash, checks, pet paperwork and school information. Carry them with you; don’t ship them. Set them aside in your locked vehicle or a room marked “Do not pack” before the movers arrive. And don’t forget to keep iPads and other items handy to entertain children during the trip.
• If you’re moving within the continental United States and will have your vehicle, pack items you’ll need when you first arrive, such as diapers, toilet paper, hand soap and cleaning supplies. Even if you expect a door-to-door move, pack some sheets, towels, an air mattress and other items, in case of delays.
• Service members can move up to 2,000 pounds of professional gear that won’t be counted toward your weight limit. Spouses can move up to 500 pounds of professional gear. Separate that and let the movers know.
• Empty the trash cans before the movers get there — and don’t forget trash in the nursery, bathrooms and garage.
• Make sure dishes and laundry are washed and dried ahead of time, and removed from the dishwasher and the dryer.
• If possible, make arrangements for child care for young children on packing and loading days. Some organizations, such as the Air Force Aid Society, will pay for some child care for PCSing families.
• Keep your pets separate from the rest of the household goods in a room with a sign on the door that reads, “Don’t enter. Pets inside.” Even if a pet is friendly, you don’t know how it will react when they see strangers in the house. Cats may jump into boxes when they’re frightened. “We’ve had cats pop out of shipments in our warehouse before,” Brooks said.
• Pull furniture away from the wall a week or two before the move, to let the back of the furniture air out. Appliances should be unplugged and aired out beforehand, too.
• If you clean your rugs and upholstered furniture, give them plenty of time to dry. Moisture is a recipe for mold.
• When the crew arrives to start packing, find out who’s in charge before anything happens and walk them through any special instructions. “If a family says, ‘We’ve got two kids and a cat and they’re going to be here,’ … we can at least make sure we’re prepared when we walk in,” Brooks said.
• Drivers may try to make the move more fun for children, like encouraging them to decorate boxes. “I love the drivers who bring the crayons and stickers,” Brooks said. “The kids get excited when they see their boxes at the new destination.”
• Always contact your local transportation or household goods office if something goes wrong and you can’t resolve it with the moving company.

DIY moves

If you’d rather handle a move on your own, multiple avenues to do so are available. Troops and their families can rent portable moving and storage containers, as well as trucks or trailers; hire a moving company; use their own vehicles; or ship boxes through a small package carrier such as the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx or UPS.

The incentive to move on your own, in part or in full, is the money: You are allowed to receive 100% of the cost the government would have paid a moving company to perform that move. You can keep any money the military doesn’t spend on your relocation, minus taxes. Contact the local transportation office or household goods office before moving to make sure you meet all the requirements to get paid.

Be extremely careful when choosing a commercial mover, Bradley and Brooks said. Rogue operators can offer an artificially low price, then dramatically increase the price when they arrive. Some have held service members’ household goods hostage, refusing to deliver them unless they ponied up exorbitant amounts of money. And no company should ask for a deposit before the move.

Just because you find someone on Google doesn’t mean they’re reputable, Brooks said. Bradley noted that if a company’s address turns out to be a third-floor apartment on Google Maps, they’re probably not reputable.

TRANSCOM suggests using a moving company registered with the federal government. You can find a list of companies that are registered with, but not endorsed by, the U.S. government on the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s website. The site also offers free resources and tools to protect yourself from scammers.

The International Association of Movers also has a free directory of moving companies that are vetted by the organization. Companies don’t have to be a member of the association, which verifies the directory’s data. Brooks and Bradley suggest searching by area, choosing three to five companies based on their qualifications and calling to ask for a pre-move survey and quote.

Beware of scammers that target service members under stress, Brooks said: “It’s sick. And it frustrates our industry.”