How Military Families Connect With Things Lost During PCS
by Lizann Lightfoot - February 10th, 2022
When military families go through a PCS move, they watch their entire household get packed into boxes and loaded onto a moving truck. After finding housing at their next assignment, they wait eagerly for their belongings to get delivered. But sometimes, only part of a shipment arrives, or a few boxes go missing along the way.
When this happens, there is a military claims process to request reimbursement for missing or damaged furniture. But if your missing boxes contain family heirlooms or sentimental items, you would probably rather locate those particular things than receive a check for their face value. For years, military families have turned to their fellow military community members to help them locate items lost during a PCS.
If you discover another family’s belongings in your household goods delivery, or notice that some of your own boxes have not been checked off the inventory, then of course you should contact the moving company and your local Transportation Office to let them know and discuss your options. The next place to go is the Facebook group called “Lost During My PCS.”
This Facebook group has over 40,000 members, mostly active duty, retired, National Guard, or Reserve family members. Together, the network reaches around the world to many overseas duty stations. The Lost During My PCS group, powered by PCSgrades, consistently helps connect lost items with their original owners. And it is a wonderful place to find advice and tips for your next move, if you’re the one feeling a little “lost” during the PCS process! The group discusses tips to prepare for a move, remain organized during PCS, and file claims afterwards. Recently, one group member’s suggestion to use Air Tags to track her PCS shipment went viral, and was reported by numerous media outlets. The discussions and tips in this group have the potential to influence the future of military moves.
Military families reunited with lost items after a move
Every day, the “Lost During My PCS” group has new posts and stories of military families either looking for lost items, or trying to reconnect lost things with their owners. PCSgrades is proud to help make these connections so that important and sentimental items can be reunited with the people who lost them! Here are some recent favorite stories from the group:
One of the most frequently-posted items in the group is photo albums. Not only are these sentimentally important to the original owners, but family photos or pictures in uniform make the owners recognizable to any friends who are members in the group. Recently, a family who moved from Virginia to Kansas found a whole crate of photos in their shipment that wasn’t theirs! After posting the crate in the Lost During My PCS group, the owners were identified. The crate was supposed to go with them to Hawaii! Other spouses on the page assisted in getting the crate from Kansas to Hawaii to be reunited.
It’s common for pets to go missing on moving day. Sometimes cats jump into moving boxes or dogs wander away from home. As one military family was preparing to move to Okinawa, Japan, their dog escaped from the kennel where he was boarding. They had to get on the plane without him, so they turned to the Facebook group to help locate him. After a week-long search, the dog was found, recovered, and reunited with stateside family members who would care for him until he was able to travel again.
Sometimes people find historic military items like old medals or uniforms, and they share pictures to the group to reconnect historic memorabilia with current military family members. One moving example is a couple who cleaned out their attic and discovered a stack of love letters written between a soldier and his wife during World War II. Since the homeowners were not family members, they used the Lost During My PCS group to look for a surviving family member who might appreciate the letters. They eventually learned that the original soldier and wife were deceased, as were their children. However, they were able to connect with a surviving grandson and share an important piece of his family’s history!
How do items get lost during a PCS move?
It’s wonderful to hear the success stories of military families reunited with their lost belongings, but you may be wondering how these mistakes can happen so often during PCS moves. After all, you see your items packed up and loaded together at your original location, so you have every reason to expect they will all still be together on the truck at your delivery destination.
However, it’s important to understand the moving industry’s process so that you have a better picture of what is happening between Point A and Point B. First, you might not be the only household on the moving truck that day. The moving industry needs to maximize truck space, especially with the shortage of drivers since the pandemic. So if your household doesn’t completely fill the tractor trailer, then they will add another household onto the same truck either that day or the next day. The company may use mattresses to form a separation wall between the two customers, but it isn’t always a solid dividing line, and it’s easy for things to shift during the drive.
Next, you need to know about what happens at the warehouse. Unless you are doing a “door to door” move where the same truck picks up your delivery, drives it to the destination, and delivers it (usually all within one week), then your household goods are going to spend some time sitting in a warehouse. This means they get unloaded from the first truck, perhaps unwrapped and unpacked if they were packaged in that company’s blankets, then stacked into a large warehouse with household goods from numerous families--both military and civilian. When your delivery date approaches, a different truck, potentially from a different moving company, will come to the warehouse to pick up your delivery and bring it to your house. And once again, you may be sharing truck space with other deliveries.
Between all of that loading and unloading, your shipment changes hands several times, so it’s not surprising that boxes sometimes go missing or delivered to the wrong address.
How to avoid losing items during a PCS
If you’re concerned about your things going missing during your next PCS move, there are some great tips from military families in the “Lost During My PCS” group who share their successful moving strategies. They discuss what to hand-carry, and how to transport sentimental items with you to your next assignment. Group members all have their own strategies for labeling boxes, keeping track of inventory sheets, and using color coded stickers to label each room. It’s essential that every box is labeled with the family’s last name (spelled correctly!) and you may want to go back and add your phone number or email address to each box. That way, if it does go missing, whoever receives it can contact you directly.
Whether you are searching for missing items, or just gathering info for your next PCS, then PCSgrades is happy to support our military community with the Lost During My PCS group!
Lizann Lightfoot, the "Seasoned Spouse" is a professional writer and speaker for the military community. After two decades with her service member, her family has been through 7 deployments and 6 PCS moves. Lizann has raised 5 children and published several books for military families. Her most recent book is "Open When: Letters of Encouragement for Military Spouses" published Sept 2021 by Elva Resa. You can find Lizann's articles and resources at SeasonedSpouse.com
