WASHINGTON — The U.S. Postal Service today announced it was ready to deliver a lot of cheer — in the form of roughly 16 billion cards, letters and packages — this holiday season.
The Postal Service, the largest e-commerce deliverer, is projecting about 750 million packages will be delivered this holiday season, a 12-percent increase in volume compared to last year.
“Our customers can count on the entire Postal Service workforce to deliver their holiday gifts, cards and letters,” said Megan J. Brennan, Postmaster General and CEO. “With the Postal Service’s unrivaled network and expanded 7-day a week delivery window, we are uniquely qualified to provide the highest levels of customer service and we are confident that’s exactly what we’ll do this holiday season.”
Additionally, the Postal Service is hiring more than 35,000 seasonal employees to help process and deliver increased volumes and meet the needs of its customers.
While the Postal Service already delivers packages on Sunday in most major cities, following the success of past holiday seasons, it will expand Sunday delivery operations to all locations with high package volumes beginning Nov. 27. More than five million packages are expected to be delivered each Sunday in December. Mail carriers will also deliver packages on Christmas Day in select locations.
Busiest Mailing and Delivery Days
The Postal Service predicts that Monday, Dec. 19, will be the busiest mailing and shipping day for holiday packages, letters and cards. Thursday, Dec. 22, is expected to be the busiest delivery day for holiday packages, cards and letters. The Postal Service anticipates nearly 30 million packages will be delivered on the peak delivery day alone.
Skip the Trip and Ship Online
Dec. 19 will also be the Postal Service’s busiest day online with more than 7 million customers predicted to visit usps.com that day alone. Customers can avoid holiday hassles by visiting usps.com — the Postal Service’s website that will help make mailing and shipping easier than ever. Millions of customers will skip the trip to the Post Office altogether and take advantage of convenient online shipping this holiday season. Click-N-Ship and other online services allow customers to order free Priority Mail boxes, print shipping labels, purchase postage and even request free next-day Package Pickup from the mail carrier.
Holiday Advertising Campaign
The 2016 holiday campaign emphasizes the proud tradition of delivering cheer and the value the Postal Service offers consumers and businesses during the holidays. The Postal Service holiday campaign will feature direct mail, TV, radio, print, digital and social media promotions.
The TV spot will begin airing today and can be viewed here. The direct mail piece will be in more than 3 million homes the week of Thanksgiving.
2016 Christmas Shipping Deadlines
The Postal Service recommends the following mailing and shipping deadlines:
- Nov. 7 – APO/FPO/DPO USPS Retail Ground
- Dec. 9 – APO/FPO/DPO Priority Mail & First Class Mail
- Dec. 15 – USPS Retail Ground
- Dec. 20 – First Class Mail
- Dec. 21 – Priority Mail
- Dec. 23 – Priority Mail Express
Additional news and information, including all domestic, international and military mailing and shipping deadlines, can be found at the Postal Service Holiday Newsroom at usps.com/holidaynews.
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12 percent increase in volume but only 3.6 percent raise on contract ,you do the math
glad this is my last christmas . 30 years in march then out. nobody cares , psa, all young with attitudes.this future postal service i want no part of.
Been in the Post Office 12 years! Never seen anything like this before……..not looking good. It’s November and they are still bring us in at 930am and trying to carriers home on their NS days. First time we are also over staffed with CCAS. 77379 SMH
Good luck this year. No morale. Employees totally
disgusted and disenfranchised. Can’t get the mail
delivered on time now. Lack of equipment and
overused, defective and outdated equipment. Trailers
are junk. Most leak and are outdated. THE SKY
IS FALLING. GET OUT NOW BEFORE IT IS TOO
LATE!!!! The powers running the show
should all be fired. Happy Thanksgiving and Merry Christmas
Crock of s… again from a PMG who was instrumental in closing dozens of plants, refusing to hire adequate help and leave cities with no mail for a couple days at a time or even 2:30 AM in Berkeley, CA. Management drags their asses on everything, especially when it comes to having enough carriers. However, when managers want craft people, usually suck ups and idiots who want to 204-B (that’s substitute or “assisting” supervisor), then they jump and leave the crafts short handed so the precious management can have 8 hour days and weekends off.
The whole joke of a training process takes two weeks, and our office is three carriers short. Even if they came on board tomorrow, they’d be useless until December. And what kind of people are some of these new hires, who don’t become career carriers until they get their own routes or are designated unassigned regulars, meaning a career full time carrier not yet assigned a route of their own? Here’s two examples, and why you as a customer should be glad if you have an old hand still delivering your route.
Undeliverable bulk mail (junk to you) gets thrown out if it’s addressed improperly, addressed to somebody who no longer lives at the address, etc. However, it’s the city carrier’s and rural’s to check such pieces to see if they have “address service” requests, in which case it’s handled like First and Second class. One CCA decided when a mail slot at his work case was getting full that he’d just chuck the rest of the mail in the UBBM tub, including 1st class, Priority Mail, and legitimate magazines and newspapers. After clerks double checking the UBBM for mail that shouldn’t be there, and it’s easy to do, found about 90 pieces of 1st class mail in this carrier’s tub and when management asked him what he thought he was doing, he just said that his work case was getting full. That could be your mail – a check, bill, other importance correspondence that a lazy newbie simply didn’t want to deal with.
Another decided that it was better to see that customers all got the same amount of mail whether it belonged to them or not. Two for you, two for you, on down the line regardless of address. Or they might, and have, just brought back trays full of mail because they didn’t “feel like delivering it” and tried to hide it under the route’s case, maybe thinking nobody would notice.
This is what you get when management wants cut rate paid carriers. They emphasize running at top speed but will not train anybody on how to properly handle change of addresses, expired forward orders, etc. I am about to retire, and I am so glad to get out of this Mongolian Clusterfuck. Hope your Christmas packages get to you, but I’d mail them off right now. I’m not kidding.