First, confirm you are on the right form. DA Form 2258 carries the official title DEPRESERVATION GUIDE FOR VEHICLES AND EQUIPMENT, and you use it to depreservation guide for vehicles and equipment. Second, check the edition: the copy offered here is dated 05/01/1971 and its publication status is ACTIVE. Third, size up the job — 6 page(s) and about unknown entry fields, so you can decide whether to fill it now or set aside time. One thing to settle first: a later edition has been issued. Reach for this one only when you are working with a record already executed on it.
Next, find out whether you are the one who fills it. In most cases you complete the entries yourself, and an administrator in your unit reviews what you wrote before it moves on. If you are the administrator, you will be working from what the individual gives you. Either way, AMC owns the form and not stated tells you when to raise it and where it goes afterward, so read the directive first if your situation is not routine.
Work from the top down, one block at a time. First the name — copy it from your official records rather than writing it the way you usually do. Then the identification number, then the unit, then today's date. Fill these before anything else. When the form reaches a file cabinet or a database, these are the entries someone searches on, so get them right before you worry about the rest.
In the body of the form, tab from field to field instead of clicking around. The tab order follows how the form was constructed, which keeps you from missing a box. For check boxes and option buttons, click them. If you find a set where the choices are exclusive, expect your new selection to clear the previous one. Keep an eye on long entries as you type: fields built for one line will not wrap, and what overflows the width will print truncated even though your screen shows all of it. At that point move the text into remarks or onto a continuation. And when something does not apply to you, say so in the field — write the entry that means "none" rather than leaving white space a reviewer has to interpret.
Save the signature for last. Sign by hand, or by whatever electronic method your office accepts, and understand that until you do the document is a draft no matter how complete it looks. If the form calls for a reviewing official, an approving authority, or a witness, take those signatures in the order the blocks print, and have each signer date it on the day they sign rather than the day you prepared it. Before you hand it over, read it once more from the top. You are looking for three things in particular: a mandatory field you left empty, digits transposed in your identification number, and a date written with day and month the wrong way round. Check one more thing if you built this form from a copy you had lying around — old entries survive in a reused file, and they will go forward as though you meant them.
You will find a Privacy Act statement on the form wherever personal information is collected. Read it at that point rather than skipping past it, because it tells you the authority for the collection, the purpose, the routine uses, and whether answering is mandatory. After you fill the form, remember that your copy contains personal data. Store it and transmit it as your office requires for records of that kind.
Download the form
Then choose a file to download. What you will see offered is PDF, and the only question you need to answer is whether you are typing or writing. Type, and you want the fillable pdf, where the entry areas respond to your keyboard. Write, and you want the printable pdf, which you print empty and complete with a pen. The layout does not change between them, so pick whichever fits how you plan to work today.
Then take care with how you open what you downloaded. Your browser will happily display a pdf, and for reading that is enough — but for typing it is not, because some in-browser viewers accept keystrokes and then throw them away when the tab closes. Put the file somewhere on disk, open it in a proper reader, type into one field and save, and confirm the text is still there when you reopen.
Then simply download. There is no charge, no sign-up and no email to hand over, and the file that arrives is exactly what the publisher released.
With the form signed, send it where not stated tells you to send it — usually to the office it names, or through your unit administrative channel, or straight into your own record, depending on why you raised it. Keep a copy for yourself before it leaves your hands. How long the receiving office holds it is not your decision or theirs; the records schedule for the series settles that, and local habit does not override it.
When another document has to travel with this one, find it by series and number. Forms in the DA series sharing a proponent or a governing directive are commonly used in combination, and anything cited on the face of your form generally goes with it. Assemble continuation sheets, covers and transmittals before you send the package rather than in response to a query.
The next time you open this form from your own files, check the edition date first. Revisions come from the proponent without warning to you, so the only reliable step is to hold your copy against the current edition before filling it in again. Records you already completed under a superseded edition stand, and you do not go back to rework them.
Read this before you go. The file you download is a reproduction of a published Department of the Army document, offered as it was published. We are an independent site with no connection to the Department of the Army and no authority to issue anything, and we make no statement about whether your completed form will be accepted anywhere. Treat what you read here as information, not legal advice. Take real questions — about an entry, a requirement, or your eligibility — to AMC or to your servicing administrative office.
Questions and answers
- What is DA Form 2258?
- DEPRESERVATION GUIDE FOR VEHICLES AND EQUIPMENT
- Which edition is current?
- 05/01/1971
- Who is responsible for this form?
- AMC
- In which formats can it be downloaded?
- PDF, PDF
Publisher notes
- 42-ITEM ONLY PRODUCED IN ELECTRONIC MEDIA