Battle Creek, Mich. –
Army Material Command recently turned in 2,870 High-Mobility Multi-Wheeled Vehicles to the Defense Logistics Agency Disposition Services team at Red River Army Depot in East Texas. “It was a combined effort here at Red River,” said Area Manager Cody Raley, who received site notification of the huge turn-in. “The Army was cutting the tickets to turn them in, but it was actually DLA Distribution employees that were going and locating the vehicles and bringing them over to us, and then we would, in turn, receive them.”
Raley said the biggest challenge the team had was figuring out where they could put them.
“They were bringing us up to 150 a week,” he said.
One of the people who stepped up to the challenge was Material Handler/Identifier Jared Yates, who personally handled most of the HMMWVs twice. Yates operated the equipment used to move the vehicles - once when they were unloaded and then again when they went back out to a customer.
Yates said the site was seeing up to 30 Humvees a day in addition to the normal flow of items other customers were turning in.
“I [handle] rolling stock,” Yates said. “So on top of the Humvees and with all my other trucks coming in, it was kind of hectic.”
Raley said the team reworked the site’s yard to fit 400 trucks. Of course, that was not enough, so Raley reached out to the base for help and a large field was made available for the temporary overflow.
Site member Dennis Keener also unloaded Humvees and he entered them into the agency’s Distribution Standard System so potential reuse customers could see them online.
Kenner said a big takeaway from the effort was learning about all the demilitarization requirements HMMWVs have.
“I have been doing this for 20 years,” Kenner said. “I never realized how many demil components were on the Humvees.”
Raley said that 212 of the trucks turned in were reutilized and 1,200 were sent out for public auction.
“I am extremely proud of everyone involved with supporting the Army Materiel Command’s HMMWV divestiture project,” said Kathy Atkins-Nuñez, director of the DLA Disposition Services Mid-America region.
“From DLA Disposition Services Red River handling the coordination with DLA Distribution and Red River Army Depot to finding the space to receive the vehicles to region staff reporting weekly stats, everyone did their part to ensure this project had a successful outcome,” Atkins-Nuñez said. “However, what I am truly impressed with is that the level of service to all their other customers did not suffer. They continued to give 100%, as that is the standard for all of DSD Mid-America.”