Hundreds of millions of holiday packages expected: Postal Service

David Becker/Las Vegas Review-Journal The U.S. Postal Service said that it plans for the peak holiday season all year. The Postal Service’s busiest time of the season peaks two weeks before Christmas when much last-minute shopping starts.

The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is ready to deliver more than 28 million packages per day through Dec. 21 and will average 20.5 million packages per day through the remainder of the year.

With a projected 800 million package deliveries between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, the Postal Service delivers more packages to homes than any other shipper, the Postal Service said in a news release.

The Postal Service expanded Sunday delivery beginning Nov. 24 to locations with high package volumes.

USPS already delivers packages on Sundays in most major cities and anticipates delivering more than 8 million packages on Sundays in December. Mail carriers will also deliver packages for an additional fee on Christmas Day in select locations.

The Postal Service said that it plans for the peak holiday season all year. This includes making sure the right equipment is available to sort, process and deliver the expected mail and package volumes. Seasonal workers are hired when and where needed, and technology has been expanded to enhance package tracking throughout the USPS processing and transportation networks.

Mailing, delivery days

The Postal Service’s busiest time of the season peaks two weeks before Christmas when much last-minute shopping starts. Customer traffic was expected to increase beginning Dec. 9, while this week is expected to be the busiest time for mailing, shipping and delivery.

Additionally, the Postal Service predicts that nearly 2.5 billion pieces of first-class mail, including greeting cards, will be processed and delivered this week.

Skip the trip and ship online

Consumers can use usps.com to ship their packages and save trips to the Post Office.

The Postal Service anticipated that Dec. 16 would be the busiest day online with more than 8.5 million consumers predicted to visit usps.com for help shipping holiday gifts.

Nearly 105 million consumers are predicted to visit usps.com between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.

The Postal Service estimated that nearly 400,000 consumers would use the Click-N-Ship feature and other online services Dec. 16 to order free Priority Mail boxes, print shipping labels, purchase postage and request free next-day package pickup.

New this year, mail and packages weighing more than 10 ounces and/or are more than a half-inch thick using stamps as postage cannot be dropped into a collection box or left for a carrier to pick up, the news release stated.

Instead, take them to a window clerk at a Post Office. Click-N-Ship customers are unaffected by this change.

For more information, go to www.usps.com