UPS Delivers 36 Million Packages - Double Normal

UPS expected to deliver 36 million packages yesterday, double its normal volume, as online retail sales continue to grow during the Christmas season.

The parcel service has hired an extra 95,000 seasonal workers to help with the expected onslaught of packages, said Fortune magazine.

The company said it expects to deliver some 630 million packages between Thanksgiving and the end of December, up 10.3 percent from 2014.

“Retailers have improved in terms of planning capabilities,” said UPS senior vice president of engineering Mark Wallace, adding that the company is better prepared to deliver on time even if it face challenges with the weather.

“We’re able to look at where the weather is impacting us in what part of the country. If an interstate is closed and rail is still moving, we may choose to put on rail rather than road to get to a destination hub.”

UPS isn’t the only package delivery service experiencing an uptick in business.

Postmaster General and chief executive officer Megan Brennan told WCBS-TV the U.S. Postal Service has seen a 15 percent growth in package volume over 2014.

“Retailers have improved in terms of planning capabilities”Mark Wallace, UPS, Senior Vice President of Engineering

FedEx told Bloomberg Business it processed 26 million packages on Dec. 14, its busiest day in history.

“I’ve been around here for a lot of peaks,” Henry Maier, chief executive of FedEx Ground, said on a Dec. 16 company conference call.

“This is without a doubt the busiest one I’ve ever seen, and it has been consistent every single day since Nov. 30. And there’s no sign it’s going to let up”

Jim Hayes, a meteorologist with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said the weather is expected to cooperate for the most part with deliveries, saying there will not be “much in the way of winter weather” to delay packages outside the U.S. mountain region.

Some retailers already have warned their customers that gifts might not arrive under their Christmas tree. Jet.com a start up of just six months that calls itself an Amazon competitor, has issued a statement that customers should expect a delay on shipments.

The statement said that the company was committed to attempting to deliver gifts on time and before Christmas by but can no longer guarantee delivery by the 25th for items that are not flagged with a 2-day delivery stamp.

The holiday clock continues to tick, but time is quickly running out , or has it, once again, run out?!

“Happy Christmas.”