Military Road Trip is free. No account, no paywall, no “premium tier” where the good stuff lives. We built it that way on purpose — because a tool that costs money to use doesn’t actually solve the problem we set out to solve.
But the reality is, free tools still cost money to build and maintain. Hosting, development, data, the occasional 2am debugging session fueled by spite and caffeine. All of that has to come from somewhere (and my VA disability doesn’t cover it).
That somewhere is affiliate commissions.
Here’s exactly how it works, what we link to and why, and what we’re planning to build with the revenue.
What Affiliate Links Are (and Aren’t)
When you click a link on this site and make a booking or purchase, we may earn a small commission from the company you bought from. You pay exactly the same price you would have paid going directly to their site. Not a penny more.
We don’t get paid to say nice things about products. We don’t let commission rates influence what we recommend. If something is in a post, it’s there because it’s genuinely useful to military families — not because someone paid us to put it there.
If that ever changes, we’ll tell you. That’s the deal.
Who We Work With and Why
Hotels.com and Expedia
Hotel search is genuinely useful during a PCS drive. Finding a room at or under the GSA lodging cap for your overnight cities — without calling three hotels and hoping someone knows what a government rate is — is a real problem.
Hotels.com and Expedia have broad inventory, solid filtering, and enough properties in most military corridors to be actually helpful. We link to pre-filtered searches for specific cities and destinations as much as possible to help you find a good place, book it, and get on your way as fast as possible.
VRBO
Three weeks in a hotel room during TLE with kids and a dog is its own special kind of PCS suffering. A whole house with a kitchen, a yard, and a washer/dryer is genuinely a better option for a lot of families and often comes out cheaper when you price it weekly.
We link to VRBO searches near major installations for families who want to explore that option.
Undercover Tourist
Authorized discount ticket seller for Disney, Universal, SeaWorld, and other major theme parks. Military families who’ve been stationed near Orlando, who are PCSing through Florida, or who have just survived a particularly brutal PCS and deserve a vacation are who Undercover Tourist is for.
What We’d Never Do
A few things worth being explicit about:
- We don’t recommend things because the commission is good. We recommend things because they’re useful to military families. If a product has a great affiliate program but isn’t actually helpful, it doesn’t go on this site.
- We don’t write fake reviews or manufacture enthusiasm. If something has drawbacks, we say so.
- We don’t put affiliate links in content where they don’t belong. A post about JTR entitlements doesn’t need a hotel affiliate link shoehorned in.
- We don’t work with competitors to the products we recommend. If we link to Hotels.com, we’re not also taking money from their competitor to say something bad about them.
What We’re Building Next
This is the part we actually want to talk about. Here’s what affiliate revenue helps fund — in rough order of when we’re hoping to build it:
Google Maps export
You generate your itinerary, you hit a button, and your full route with all overnight stops opens in Google Maps ready to navigate. This one’s close.
Email capture and saved trips
Right now your trip is saved in your browser. If you clear your cache or switch devices, it’s gone. We want to give you a way to save your trip to an account so it’s there when you need it — from any device, six weeks after you built it.
PCS Binder
Your downloadable PDF currently includes your itinerary and a receipt checklist. The PCS Binder would expand that into a more comprehensive document — pet paperwork checklist, housing checklist, voucher prep guide — everything in one printable packet you take with you on the drive.
Mobile app
A proper iOS and Android app with offline access, en route mode (morning brief with that day’s drive, per diem, and nearby stops), and push notifications when you’re approaching a stop worth making. This is the big one and it requires real resources to build properly.
Receipt capture
Take photos of receipts as you go, attach them to your trip in the app, and export everything into a clean PDF when you’re ready to file your voucher. No more hunting through your camera roll for a hotel receipt from four nights ago.
Eventually: the full travel advisor
The long game is making Military Road Trip a place military families can go for everything travel-related — not just the PCS drive, but TDY planning, leave trips, base guides, and the full picture of what you’re entitled to and how to use it. We’ve been building the content foundation for that since day one.
But more importantly, as a veteran-founded org, we get that military members and their families give a lot to our country. We understand that families want to have a good time without breaking the bank, and sometimes leave changes at the last minute. We’re building a platform that helps you navigate challenges easily, so you can look forward to taking time off.
The Short Version
We built this because military families deserve better tools than a government website from 2009 and a spreadsheet. Affiliate commissions help us keep building.
When you book through our links, you’re not paying more — you’re helping us build more.
That’s the deal. Thanks for being here.
— Ashley, Military Road Trip