With fuel scarce, the mission runs on jerry cans

The Defense Logistics Agency’s Reutilization, Transfer and Donation program helped the U.S. Marine Corps’ 1st Medical Battalion at Camp Pendleton, California, secure urgently needed fuel containers after the items landed on a DLA back-order list, the agency said.

DLA Disposition Services, which typically handles excess military materiel at the end of its life cycle, tapped its RTD network to return usable equipment to the force. Don Cassada, a management and program analyst for the program, took the lead to locate, requisition and ship the containers, commonly known as jerry cans. “Each day I would go through our inventory to find items that matched, and this was one of those special taskers that I took upon myself to try and figure out for the customer,” Cassada said. The jerry can design dates to World War II and is prized for rugged construction, easy carrying and stackability—features largely retained in modern high-density plastic versions.

Cassada coordinated across multiple DLA field sites to fulfill the request. “I reached out to our field sites and explained this special project that I was working on and asked what kind of attention they could give us,” Cassada said. “So, this became a very coordinated effort to get these items where they needed to go.”

According to DLA, the fuel containers were sourced from Disposition Services locations in Barstow, California; Camp Lejeune, North Carolina; and Kaiserslautern, Germany, and shipped to support the deployed I Marine Expeditionary Force. Without the RTD solution, the unit would have had to buy from a commercial vendor, incurring added purchase and transportation costs, the agency said.

Cassada said the effort demonstrated how RTD can backstop supply delays and quickly return excess property to units facing readiness impacts, especially when they engage local disposal services representatives or RTD analysts to search existing inventories.

“If they didn’t have the jerry cans over there, they wouldn’t be able to transport extra fuel and have the ability to travel farther than what their regular tanks allow,” Cassada said. “This may be a tiny blip in the big picture, but this can be something much bigger for a warfighter who is trying to do their job and may be struggling to find the resources to do it.”