New system helps Porters cut load times

by Staff Sgt. Patrick Harrower
60th Air Mobility Wing Public Affairs

10/18/2013 - TRAVIS AIR FORCE BASE, Calif. -- While there is nothing the Airmen at Travis can do to stop an earthquake, tsunami or hurricane, there is one element they are in total control of; the response time of Air Mobility Command aircraft and its assets.

The 60th Aerial Port Squadron unveiled a new Deployable Automated Cargo Measurement System Oct. 10 here. The new system cuts the average time it takes porters to weigh and measure a vehicle from 20 or 30 minutes to less than 1 minute. That equates to less time military and emergency response vehicles need to spend on base before they can get to the scene of the disaster and begin assistance.

"I wish we had a system like this back in 1995," said Richard Salek, 60th APS cargo operations foreman. "I was stationed at Rhein-Main Air Base, Germany, and we had to send over 1,000 vehicles to Bosnia. It took ages to accomplish, but this system would have been great."

Before the 60th APS had the DACMS, each vehicle had to be parked, weighed, measured and labeled before it could be loaded onto an aircraft. With the new system, a vehicle doesn't even have to stop rolling to get all of the same metrics, said Tech Sgt. Arthur Lavoie, 60th APS cargo deployment function NCO in charge.

As a vehicle is driven through, lasers first measure the length, width and height of it and any trailers or cargo that may be attached. Then, without stopping, it is driven over the scales which find the center-of-balance, gross weight and axle weights. A label is then printed out with everything the porters need to know about the vehicle, he said.

"This system, while not new to mobility operations, is a massive victory for Travis porters who work all hours of the day, in any weather condition, to process cargo and load our aircraft," said Col. Mark Weber, 60th Maintenance Group commander. "Before this, our process had customers waiting in long mobility lines as one piece of equipment at a time rolled slowly through the manual Joint Inspection. It wasn't a system flaw, just the reality of the human process. With this specific upgrade we have modernized to the point where we will now be waiting for the customers. Simply awesome."

The system has already been put to use for a real-world mission to move a C-17 Globemaster III engine to Hawaii. Porters were able to get all the metrics on the engine and get it out to an aircraft to be loaded in just minutes, Salek said.