Military Forms Guide

DD Form 1384 — DD Form 1384, Transportation Control and Movement Document, October 2000

Transportation Control and Movement Document

Consider what a Department-level form is for. DD Form 1384 — DD Form 1384, Transportation Control and Movement Document, October 2000 — was established to Transportation Control and Movement Document, and it was placed in the DD sequence because the underlying transaction occurs throughout the Defense establishment in substantially the same shape. Standardizing the record was cheaper and more reliable than letting six services each design their own.

This is why the arrangement matters to you rather than only to the archivists. not stated governs the form throughout the Department, with not stated as the responsible office, so the record you create is legible outside your own component. Joint assignments, agency details and cross-service transactions all depend on that: the paperwork does not have to be reconstructed each time it crosses a boundary.

You are looking for edition not stated, listed as not stated. Department-wide supersession is a single event rather than a rollout, which is what distinguishes edition currency on a DD form from the same question on a service publication: nobody anywhere is still accepting the previous version out of habit.

The form is laid out top to bottom in a sequence that reflects how the record will be read, not merely how it was drawn. Identification comes first because everything below it is understood in relation to a named person, unit or transaction; substantive entries follow; certification closes the document because certification attests to what precedes it. Filling out of order tends to produce internal inconsistencies — an entry that made sense before the header was settled and does not afterward.

Check the edition date before you type anything, against not stated. Old blanks accumulate in shared drives for years, and the cost of one is not obvious until a reviewer cannot find a field. Because DD forms are revised centrally and replaced across the Department in a single action, there is no component still tolerating the old layout as a local practice.

For an ambiguous field, read the form's own instruction, then not stated, which controls.

Download the form

What you can download: PDF. The form runs 1 pages and asks for approximately 200 entries. The plurality of formats is deliberate: Defense distribution has never been able to assume one operating environment across the whole force.

Two states of the same page circulate, and the reason is worth knowing. In the fillable pdf, the boxes are real fields holding real data; in the printable pdf, the boxes are drawings. Where a record will cross components — as Department records regularly do — the typed version is the safer artifact. Each scan, each forwarding, each reproduction costs handwriting a little legibility, and the office that finally files the record is rarely the office that received it first.

What the form asks for

  • Page number.
  • 1. document identifier
  • 2. trailer container
  • 3. consignor
  • 4. commodity special handling
  • 5. air dimensions
  • 6. P O E
  • 7. P O D
  • 8. Mode
  • 9. pack
  • 10. Transportation control number
  • 12. priority
  • 13. R D D
  • 14. project
  • 15. date shipped
  • 16. E T A
  • 17. T R account
  • 18. carrier
  • 19. Flight - truck - voyage document number
  • 20. ref
  • 21. remarks
  • 22. pieces
  • 23. weight
  • 24. cube

Submission follows not stated and whatever local instruction supplements it. Make a copy before the original leaves. Department forms travel across organizational lines by design, and the administrative distance that makes them useful is the same distance that makes tracing a lost one difficult.

Forms referenced inside this one are located by number alone, and that simplicity is a direct product of Department-level numbering. Because the DD sequence is maintained centrally and not duplicated by service, a number is a complete address: one number, one document, throughout the Defense establishment.

It helps to see the DA and DD sequences as what they are: separate registries with separate custodians. One serves a single service under a service proponent, the other serves the Department under not stated or an equivalent office, and neither was ever indexed against the other. A number that appears in both systems points to two unrelated documents, which is why reading the prefix comes before reading the digits.

Understanding why editions change explains why checking them is not optional. Revision follows directive reissue, changes in what data is required, and amendments to mandatory notice text — decisions made at Department level and communicated through publication rather than notification. The file you saved does not update itself, so the edition date at download is what you rely on.

A word on what this page is. It distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes what the document contains and how it is completed. It is not the issuing authority, does not speak for one, and offers no legal advice; nothing written here determines whether a particular submission will be accepted, because that determination belongs entirely to the office receiving it. Questions of applicability, eligibility or procedure go to not stated, to your servicing personnel office, or to the office identified in not stated.

Questions and answers

What is DD Form 1384?
DD Form 1384, Transportation Control and Movement Document, October 2000
Which edition is current?
Not stated by the publisher
Who is responsible for this form?
Not stated
In which formats can it be downloaded?
PDF

Other forms in the series