DOD demands PowerTrack for shipping

The Army Military Traffic Management Command will require all commercial

shipping companies moving Defense Department personnel and equipment to

use PowerTrack, an electronic payment and tracking system, as of Nov. 30.

The MTMC is a component of the joint U.S. Transportation Command and

supports surface transportation missions, including shipping the personal

belongings of more than 1.3 million military personnel and deploying troops

and equipment to the world's hot spots.

The command's mission includes moving 16 million shipments a year at

a cost of $1 billion in annual commercial transportation services.

"We want to mandate it because we want to move to a standard electronic

process with industry, reduce infrastructure and cost. We've been working

toward this for almost three years and need to move from a government process

to a commercial process," said Tom Hicks, command management reform representative

at MTMC.

More than 50 percent of MTMC's commercial shippers already are using

the system.

PowerTrack was developed by US Bank Inc. and is described on the company

Web site as "a single-source information center [that] provides instant

access to shipment data for both carriers and shippers; eliminates the need

for reconciling freight bills and invoices; guarantees fast, accurate payments;

and provides exceptional, real-time and analytical reporting tools for better

logistics management decisions."

MTMC announced its intentions in the Aug. 4 Federal Register. The military

intends mandating PowerTrack usage by the end of November for "air, barge

pipeline, rail and sealift carries" and by the end of the year for all "guaranteed

traffic carriers."