By Briana Vannozzi
Correspondent
“Last minute mailing, about a hundred cards.”
Time is running out to mail those last minute Christmas cards and packages. But not to worry, postal carriers are counting on your procrastination.
“We do parcel runs in the morning, parcel runs at night. If you’re out on the roads, you’re seeing the mail trucks all over the place right now,” said U.S. Post Office Operations Manager William Gleason.
Post Master Gleason says they’re anticipating a 12 percent increase. More than 470 million packages will be delivered between Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve.
They’re operating seven days a week to make sure it all arrives on schedule.
“We rented vehicles to make sure there are enough vehicles to accommodate the parcel increase. We had employees actually start early in the morning — some of them as early as 6:30 in the morning,” Gleason said.
When asked if it was a tough day to be sending packages, Hamilton resident Randy Rader said, “Oh yeah, but I’m very fortunate the post office seems pretty empty which is great. I’ll be in and out in no time.”
Bad weather and an uptick in last minute shipments — primarily due to more online shoppers — wreaked havoc on deliveries last year. FedEx spent billions upgrading planes, cargo networks and ground shipping infrastructure for this season. UPS — its rival — did the same spending about $500 million on upgrades. Combined, they’ve hired about 150,000 more workers for the holidays.
When asked if he is anticipating running into those problems in terms of bad weather or last minute demands, Gleason said, “Oh absolutely not.”
Both carriers expect to handle more parcels than ever this year. FedEx is preparing to deliver about 290 million shipments between Black Friday and Christmas Eve — an increase of nearly 9 percent over last year. UPS says it anticipates delivering 585 million packages — an 11 percent increase.
And in case you can’t wrap your head around that number, UPS says if their packages were set side by side, they’d circle the earth nearly four and a half times. Those numbers are expected to continually rise as more retailers push delivery cutoff dates further into the season.
When asked if snail mail is not lost, Caitlin Flynn of Hamilton said, “Oh no, not at all. I love sending letters, receiving letters.”
And for the last-minute holiday thrill seekers, there’s good news. Several dozen post offices will remain open around the state past noon on Christmas Eve. You’ll have to check with your municipality to see if your town is one of them. And if you mail your parcel priority express, you can expect it to be delivered by Christmas Day.