Download the form
Treat DD Form 2781 as Department-level, which changes how you look for it. Title: DD Form 2781, Container Packing Certificate or Vehicle Packing Declaration, August 2013. Function: Container Packing Certificate or Vehicle Packing Declaration. Because the number carries DD rather than a service prefix, the same edition covers all military departments and the defense agencies at once. Nobody issues a Navy copy or an Air Force copy.
not stated is the prescribing publication and not stated the office responsible for the document. Deadlines belong to local implementing guidance, not to either of those, so a submission date is a question for the receiving office.
Use not stated, status not stated. Older printings circulate widely and lose their currency Department-wide the moment a new edition issues.
Available: PDF, across 1 pages, roughly 20 fields. That is the whole scope of the download decision.
Take the fillable pdf unless you have a reason not to. Fillable means the boxes are real fields that accept typed text and retain it in the file. Printable means a flat blank — no fields, printer and pen only. The difference is not cosmetic: one produces a record that reproduces cleanly through scanning and forwarding, the other depends on penmanship.
What the form asks for
- Container or vehicle number being inspected.
- Enter "N/A" if not applicable.
- Enter "N/A" if not applicable.
- Enter "N/A" if not applicable.
- Enter "N/A" if not applicable.
- Enter "N/A" if not applicable.
- Enter "N/A" if not applicable.
- Enter "N/A" if not applicable.
- Enter "N/A" if not applicable.
- Enter "N/A" if not applicable.
- Enter "N/A" if not applicable.
- 2. Person responsible for packing. a. Name (last, first, middle initial).
- 2.b. Rank/Grade.
- 2.c. Title.
- 2.d. Organization.
- 2.e. Place packed.
- 2.f. Signature.
- 2.g. Date. Enter as 4 digit year, 2 digit month and 2 digit day, no separators.
Verify the edition before the first keystroke. The date on the form face should read not stated. If it does not, discard the file. Field numbering shifts between editions, and on a DD form the new layout reaches every receiving office in every service at once — there is no lag during which the old version is still normal somewhere.
For anything ambiguous in a specific field, the form's own instructions come first and not stated controls where the two differ.
Route it where not stated or local procedure directs, and keep a copy first. On a Department form the receiving office is frequently outside your own chain — another service, a defense agency, a joint command — which makes recovering a lost original slower than it would be internally.
Related forms are found by number alone. The DD sequence is one unified Department-wide series, so a cited number resolves to exactly one document with no branch qualifier needed.
Prefix before number. A DA citation and a DD citation in the same instruction point at separate systems — one Army, administered by an Army proponent, one Department-wide under not stated — and there is no correspondence between them at any number.
Three drivers of revision: directive reissue, altered collection requirements, updated statutory notice text. No notification accompanies any of them, so download fresh and confirm not stated rather than reusing an archived file.
Limits of this page: it distributes a published Department of Defense document and describes it. No legal advice, no procedural ruling, no statement about whether any submission will be accepted. Applicability, eligibility and procedure belong to not stated, to a servicing personnel office, or to the office named in not stated.
Questions and answers
- What is DD Form 2781?
- DD Form 2781, Container Packing Certificate or Vehicle Packing Declaration, August 2013
- Which edition is current?
- Not stated by the publisher
- Who is responsible for this form?
- Not stated
- In which formats can it be downloaded?