The Shadow
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service expects to deliver nearly 15 billion pieces of mail and 900 million packages, for a total of nearly 16 billion deliveries, this holiday season — the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.
“The Postal Service is ready to deliver for the holiday season. We have increased our operating capacity to include additional transportation and extended our delivery windows,” said Megan J. Brennan, postmaster general and CEO. “Our dedicated employees are proud to deliver more packages to homes than any other shipper.”
Once again the Postal Service is expanding its Sunday delivery operations to locations with high package volumes beginning Nov. 25.
The Postal Service already delivers packages on Sundays in most major cities and anticipates delivering more than 8 million packages on Sundays this December. Mail carriers will also deliver packages on Christmas Day in select locations.
With an increase in early and online shopping for gifts, there is no longer a “busiest day” for holiday shipping. Instead, the Postal Service’s busiest time is now two weeks before Christmas.
Starting the week of Dec. 10, customer traffic is expected to increase, and the Postal Service expects to deliver nearly 200 million packages per week during these two weeks.
The week of Dec. 17-23 is predicted to be the busiest mailing, shipping and delivery week, when nearly 3 billion pieces of First-Class Mail, including greeting cards, will be processed and delivered.
The Postal Service anticipates Dec. 17 will be its busiest day online with more than 8 million consumers predicted to visit usps.com for help shipping gifts. It’s predicted that nearly 105 million consumers will visit the website between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.
