WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA) today sent a second letter to the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Transportation Command (TRANSCOM) expressing disappointment with their passive approach to rectifying a problem that thousands of servicemembers are experiencing – their personal vehicles have been misplaced or lost by the new DoD contractor responsible for moving their vehicles during permanent change of station moves to and from overseas duty stations. 

“Imagine not having your vehicle, not knowing where it is, and not being able to get in contact with anyone responsible for its delivery. This is unfair, inconvenient, and unacceptable,” Sen. Warner wrote in his letter to Gen. Paul Selva, TRANSCOM commander.  “While I recognize that the contractor is responsible for these deliveries, I expect TRANSCOM to be actively engaged, as advocates and intermediaries for the servicemembers, until this problem is solved.”

Sen.  Warner’s follow-up letter comes after his first, dated Aug. 18, resulted in a meeting last week with representatives from TRANSCOM.  During the meeting, TRANSCOM representatives said the contractor was performing significantly below the required 98 percent on-time rate, but could not answer basic questions, including “How many vehicles are currently past due?”

Sen. Warner has been contacted for help by constituents with missing vehicles. They have asked for help because, in addition to being burdened by having initially to pay out of pocket to rent vehicles, they have had trouble getting in contact with a representative of the contractor to find out the status of their cars, and TRANSCOM has been unhelpful.

In his follow-up letter, Sen.  Warner asked General Selva to provide an additional  briefing not only about what the Army is doing to fix the problem, but also to figure out exactly how big the problem is, and to explain how TRANSCOM and the Army working to ease the burden of servicemembers inconvenienced by missing vehicles.