For anybody in the military????

bishopmarine · Post by **bishopmarine** » Sat Apr 19, 2008 10:48 am

you can not purchase any items on military base without id card. the reason is taxes are not charged to active duty military. i know you can purchase whole cases of mre's at parris island commisary but they are cheaper on ebay. uncle sam charges a little more than what he pays for them at the commisary. which if i am not mistaken is about 8 dollars per meal.

Mkim340518 · Post by **Mkim340518** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:34 am

bishopmarine wrote:you can not purchase any items on military base without id card. the reason is taxes are not charged to active duty military. i know you can purchase whole cases of mre's at parris island commisary but they are cheaper on ebay. uncle sam charges a little more than what he pays for them at the commisary. which if i am not mistaken is about 8 dollars per meal.

WOW our government pays about * bucks a meal for those MRE's???????Does anybody have a price comparison to what the U.S. spends on combat rations compared to any other country?

Post by **kman** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 10:50 am

You can find the official DSCP price list for Operational Rations here:

http://www.dscp.dla.mil/subs/rations/prices.pdf

MREs currently cost $85.55 per case. But keep in mind that's just what the government charges itself for MREs - that's not necessarily what they're paying Sopakco, Ameriqual, or Wornick to produce them.

I was hoping to be able to find some recent MRE contract awards and figure out the true cost based on contract award vs. MREs produced - but unfortunately, they don't spell out the exact quantities of MREs per contract:

$51M in awards
viewtopic.php?t=1437

Mkim340518 · Post by **Mkim340518** » Mon Apr 21, 2008 2:28 pm

Wow Kman those numbers are staggering. With your best educated guess...how many MRE's do you think are actually issued out every year? And how big of a stock do you think our military has in it's enormous reserves?
And do you think to save money that the military would start to make 24hr ration packs?

kman wrote:You can find the official DSCP price list for Operational Rations here:

http://www.dscp.dla.mil/subs/rations/prices.pdf

MREs currently cost $85.55 per case. But keep in mind that's just what the government charges itself for MREs - that's not necessarily what they're paying Sopakco, Ameriqual, or Wornick to produce them.

I was hoping to be able to find some recent MRE contract awards and figure out the true cost based on contract award vs. MREs produced - but unfortunately, they don't spell out the exact quantities of MREs per contract:

$51M in awards
viewtopic.php?t=1437

Treesuit · Post by **Treesuit** » Sat Apr 26, 2008 12:49 am

Kman,
Hey I was wondering I saw in a Govt' Services Administration (GSA) catalog that as of 2008 the GSA sells cases of MRE's for $91.20 each. That is the most current stock I would imagine; now is there anywhere in the DSCP listing that made any reference to prices and how much GSA could charge? I just find that GSA charges so much for rations and forces other Gov't agencies to go through them to get stuff rather than price out certain things?

Post by **kman** » Sat Apr 26, 2008 9:49 pm

Treesuit wrote: Hey I was wondering I saw in a Govt' Services Administration (GSA) catalog that as of 2008 the GSA sells cases of MRE's for $91.20 each. That is the most current stock I would imagine; now is there anywhere in the DSCP listing that made any reference to prices and how much GSA could charge?

Treesuit, you can find the DSCP prices here:

http://www.dscp.dla.mil/subs/rations/prices.pdf

It looks like MREs are going for $85.55/case on that price list.

Mkim340518 wrote:With your best educated guess...how many MRE's do you think are actually issued out every year? And how big of a stock do you think our military has in it's enormous reserves?
And do you think to save money that the military would start to make 24hr ration packs?

I really don't have any idea how many MREs are issued out every year. A lot of that will depend on the scope of military operations around the world - and whether or not any natural disasters have occurred (like Hurricane Katrina) that might eat into the MRE supplies.

But I did see a set of figures from a DSCP presentation here:

http://www.militaryfood.org/powerpoint/ ... ollier.ppt

I'll copy the relevant slide in below, but the totals for 2007 look like this:

MRE Contract Awards for 2007:
Cases: 3,439,744
Value: $183,441,465
Average cost per case: $53.33

So it costs the government around $53 per case to procure the MREs and then they add on $32 to come up with the final, internal price.

As for the US coming up with a 24 hour ration, that might save a little money in terms of packaging cost, but it'd be a pretty radical change to the way the military handles rations. But who knows - the First Strike Rations are intended to be a whole day's food so maybe they'll also come up with a more substantive 24 hour ration in the future.

Treesuit · Post by **Treesuit** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 7:32 pm

Kman,
Okay, that would seem plausible. I took a brief look at the price list and am still wondering why GSA is marking up the price of MRE's? It seems to be about 4-5% mark up between DSCP and GSA. I just wonder why GSA would do that if they're just another Government agency and would care less about making a profit. Maybe I'm not seeing something or the "big picture".

Post by **kman** » Sun Apr 27, 2008 8:20 pm

I know it sounds stupid (but since when is the government supposed to make sense?) but maybe they're just trying to account for their own costs. Sure, they may not be out to make a profit, but they probably don't want to take a loss and if they have to set up some sort of system to order and deliver these things, that system is going to cost a little money.

Just guessing here. The real answer to "Why are they marking up the price?" is probably more like "Because they can."