With more and more people doing their holiday shopping online these days, the postal service sure is kept busy from about Thanksgiving to New Years, but just how crazy do things get?
Well, the US Postal Service predicts they'll deliver nearly 15 billion pieces of mail and 900 million packages between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, which amounts to about 16 billion deliveries. To help ease the load they'll be amping up Sunday deliveries starting November 25th, with about eight million packages expected to be delivered on Sundays, and in some cities, they’ll even be delivering on Christmas Day.
The holiday season is such a busy time for the Postal Service that these days they can’t even designate a “busiest day” for holiday shipping. They do note that the busiest time for them is usually the two weeks leading up to Christmas, with the Postal Service delivering nearly 200 million packages per week during that time. The absolutely busiest week will be between December 17th to 23rd, where nearly three billion pieces of First Class Mail is expected to be processed and delivered.
And if you want to guarantee your package or holiday card is at your door in time to spread holiday cheer, you may want to stick to the following deadlines:
- December 14 – USPS Retail Ground
- December 20 – First-Class Mail (including greeting cards)
- December 20 – First-class packages (up to 15.99 ounces)
- December 20 – Hawaii to mainland Priority Mail and First-Class Mail
- December 20 – Priority Mail
- December 20 – Alaska to mainland Priority Mail and First-Class Mail
- December 22 – Alaska to mainland Priority Mail Express
- December. 22 – Hawaii to mainland Priority Mail Express
- December 22 – Priority Mail Express
Source: Business Journals