New AMC delivery process speeds shipments to troops

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Mark Diamond
  • Air Mobility Command Public Affairs
SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. (AFPN) --  A new Air Mobility Command program, dubbed "Pure Pallet,” is simplifying and speeding up airlift shipments into the U.S. Central Command’s area of responsibility.

The program involves building and shipping individual aircraft pallets with cargo for a single customer, AMC officials said.

Lt. Col. Steve AuBuchon, AMC's cargo management branch chief of the logistics air transportation division, said that a customer's cargo is normally loaded onto an aircraft pallet with cargo for other customers within the same region. Under this system, a single pallet could contain cargo for dozens of customers. The colonel said once these "mixed" pallets arrive at a forward-deployed aerial port, they must be broken down, sorted, re-palletized and distributed to the individual customers.

Besides adding a considerable amount of time to the delivery process, Colonel AuBuchon said the Airmen, Soldiers or Marines responsible for breaking down, sorting, rebuilding and redistributing these mixed shipments are vulnerable to attack for longer periods of time.

"In CENTCOM right now, the aerial ports are very restricted on the amount of cargo processing facilities, equipment, people and experience (because of) the threat of attack," he said. "If you're unloading and sorting cargo at Balad, you could easily have a mortar drop on top of you."

The program transfers this additional workload to what he called, "the peaceful end of the process." When a pure pallet arrives at the deployed aerial port, it can be pulled from the aircraft and immediately handed off to the customer or placed on a truck or C-130 Hercules headed to more remote locations. "The process never stops," Colonel AuBuchon said.

The colonel said the program is based on the principle that the earlier in the logistics pipeline that individual shipments are unitized into a single package, the quicker and more efficiently the package is going to go through the system.

"Obviously, there are going to be some limitations, but our limitations are (fewer) than they have [at the deployed aerial port], so we've taken this upon ourselves," he said.

What the program means to the warfighter is a more rapid and simplified distribution of shipments into the theater of operations, said Maj. Michael Kossow, the branch’s chief of strategic distribution.

"Our nation's military efforts in support of the global war on terrorism, particularly those of the Army and Marine Corps in the Central Command area of responsibility, have changed the old paradigm of logistics support to a new philosophy of time-definite delivery," he said. "The focus is on airlifting shipments to the warfighter at the right speed, at the right time, and most importantly, on the right pallet to a designated location."

Since March, the program has been incorporated in aerial port operations at Dover Air Force Base, Del., Charleston AFB, S.C., and Ramstein Air Base, Germany, for cargo shipments into the CENTCOM theater.

The process of building each pure pallet begins at the aerial port, where cargo is held in aisles or lanes, according to the customer's Department of Defense activity address code. Colonel AuBuchon said the codes can be compared to ZIP codes used by the U.S. Postal Service -- each customer has his or her own code.

"One of the problems with building pure pallets is having enough cargo to fill an entire pallet," the colonel said. "When we were negotiating with the Army and Marine Corps, we told them it would kill us to ship a half-empty pallet. Airlift is a precious commodity, and we can't send a C-5 (Galaxy) over there with 36 half-empty pallets. We have better things to use that airlift for. Airlift is a precious national asset, and we have to make sure we use it as efficiently as we can."

He said Army and Marine Corp officials said they would be willing to wait a certain a number of days for the aerial port to accumulate cargo for specific codes. Additionally, Colonel AuBuchon said certain codes can be combined to fill a single pallet.

Although the aerial ports are holding cargo for an additional three to five days, Major Kossow said the program has still reduced delivery times into Southwest Asia.

He said because a single, mixed pallet could include cargo for dozens of customers within the same region, aerial port workers and customers expend valuable time and resources breaking down, sorting, rebuilding and distributing the shipments, resulting in delays of up to several weeks.

The major said pure pallets, on average, are reaching their customers in fewer than nine days.

But Colonel AuBuchon said AMC officials cannot take all the credit.

Although pure pallets are new to the Air Force, the colonel said AMC's program was actually modeled after a similar system used by the Defense Logistics Agency.

"Our pure pallet operations are much smaller than the Defense Logistics Agency, but no less effective," Colonel AuBuchon said. "Our program has been very successful. (Soldiers have) had some very high praise for the program, not only because the cargo is getting to them faster, but because of the quality job AMC is doing."

Major Kossow said the "quality" is a byproduct of the hard work from AMC Airmen.

"Our AMC aerial ports at Charleston, Dover and Ramstein have made a very complex and unique task look easy," he said, "but the reality is these aerial port professionals have really stepped up to the task with hard work, creativity and an insatiable drive to keep the warfighter equipped in the global war on terrorism." (Courtesy of AMC News Service)