15th SB 1st to push brigade "fort to port"

By Sgt. Matthew C. Cooley, 15th Sustainment Brigade Public AffairsNovember 17, 2008

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FORT HOOD, Texas - Many Soldiers here know how time consuming it can be for a unit's equipment to be transferred around from the container yard, to the Deployment Readiness and Reaction Facility, to the line haul site, and finally shipped down to the coast.

For units scheduled to deploy with the support of 15th Sustainment Brigade, 13th Sustainment Command (Expeditionary), this may be a thing of the past.

Nine 15th SB, 13th Sustainment Command Soldiers were the first to move a brigade's equipment directly out from its motor pools to the port in only two days using a new process here, Nov. 5 - 6.

15th SB pushed out 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division's 60 cargo containers in record time using the new Deployable Automatic Cargo Measurement System, a large portable scale that can be brought to a unit's motor pool and saves time.

"It saves three or four days worth of work," Sgt. 1st Class Ernest Grant, 15th SB transportation noncommissioned officer in charge, said.

"What [we] did, no one has ever even tried before."

Grant explained the push was a three stage process.

The first stage was prepositioning. All containers' contents were identified and the equipment set up for deployment from the motor pools.

In the second stage, everything was weighed using the DACMS scales and inspected by the Department of Logistics.

In the final stage, the containers were loaded onto civilian trucks, contracted to move the equipment to port for shipment to Iraq.

"What I see here is a lot smoother," Staff Sgt. Michael Morales, 3rd BDE, 1st CD mobility noncommissioned officer in charge, said, comparing the new method to the old one.

"From fort to port ... straight from A to Z," Grant explained.

15th's nine Soldier team had members from the brigade's transportation section and multiple movement control teams using only three forklifts, one Rough Terrain Container Handler RT 240 "Kalmar," and the DACMS scales.

"It was kind of hard at first ... but got better," Spc. Gabriel Ballard, a 259th MCT, 49th Transportation Battalion, 15th SB, 13th ESC transportation management coordinator said.

"It felt good to be part of something no has done before."