PCS orders, two cars
and only one of them ships

Defense Supply Center Columbus sits a few miles from here and Rickenbacker is down the road, so a decent share of what comes through this buying center is a PCS. The pattern repeats: fixed date, no flexibility, a household with two vehicles, and an entitlement that covers one. This page is about the second car, and about not leaving it until the week the packers arrive.

On a permanent change of station move that crosses into or out of OCONUS, the government will ship one privately owned vehicle at its expense. One per service member or household, depending on the specifics of your orders.

Additional vehicles go at your own cost, even when they meet every other criterion. There are size and weight limits on the one that does ship, and some destinations carry customs or host-nation restrictions on top.

None of that is our call and none of it is negotiable at our end. What it means practically is that a two-car household with overseas orders has to do something with the second vehicle, and the realistic options are ship it privately, store it, leave it with family, or sell it.

Confirm your own entitlement with your transportation office rather than taking a website's word for it, including this one. Guidance varies by branch, by destination and by the wording of your orders.

The report date is fixed. Everything else has to fit before it, and the piece with the longest lead time is almost always a lienholder.

Worth doing the arithmetic rather than defaulting, because the default is usually storage and storage is usually the worst of the three.

This is the one that causes genuine trouble, and it's the reason to start early rather than efficiently.

We contact your lender, get the ten-day payoff, pay them directly and send written confirmation once the lien is released. That first step runs on the lender's timeline. Some come back in an hour; some take several days.

Managing a lien release from overseas, across time zones, with limited connectivity, is materially harder than doing it from Columbus. If your orders have you leaving before the release is likely to land, tell us at the first conversation — there are ways to sequence it, but only if we know in advance.

If you owe more than the vehicle is worth, we still buy it. You cover the gap and we give you the exact figure before you commit, which is better found out now than while you're out-processing.

Ohio requires the seller's signature on the title assignment to be notarized in person. That's the constraint that shapes everything else about who has to be where.

If both names are on the title, both people sign. Ohio issues titles with the conjunction "and" rather than "or", so joint ownership means every owner signs — there's no version where one signature is enough.

If you're already gone and your spouse is handling the sale, a properly executed power of attorney is the usual route, and the specifics matter. Your installation legal assistance office does these routinely and at no cost. Talk to them before you leave rather than trying to arrange it from a different continent.

We'd rather tell you this now than have your spouse arrive with a car we can't legally buy.

It happens, and it's a normal call for us.

Pickup is free anywhere in Ohio and across Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and it's never deducted from your offer. Whoever is holding the keys can hand the vehicle over, provided the paperwork is in order.

Tell us where the car is, who's there, and what your situation is with the title. We'll tell you straight what's possible from where you are.