Holidays mean bump in shipping activity
Lance Arave of Evergreen removes letters from the sorting machine on Wednesday night at the post office in Kalipsell. In the first three hours of the shift Arave and Jim Perry of Kalispell ran more than 71,000 letters through the sorter.
Nicole Mann of Kalispell lifts a tray of Netflix DVD's on Wednesday night at the post office in Kalipsell. The DVD's can't be run through the sorter because they might get bent.
Packages and envelopes are whizzing through local post offices and shipping company warehouses at a record pace this year.
The Kalispell Post Office expects its busiest day of the year to be Monday, Dec. 20. Volume that day is expected to exceed the 100,000 pieces of mail canceled in Kalispell on Dec. 13, Acting Postmaster Rich Burley said, which should shake out to be the second-busiest day of the year for the U.S. Postal Service.
The Kalispell Post Office on Meridian Avenue is a regional center where all mail for ZIP codes that begin with 599 is processed, Burley said.
On a typical day in the fall, which is a busier season than summer for the post office, the Kalispell facility cancels 40,000 pieces of mail, Burley said. In the summer, a typical day’s volume is about 30,000 pieces.
“So we’re triple what a normal day is for us,” he said of volume for a couple of weeks around Christmas.
The postal process is fully automated these days, Burley said, so employees aren’t hand-canceling and sorting each piece of mail as they did years ago.
“I can’t imagine what it would be like if we had to do it by hand,” he said.
The parcel volume at the Kalispell Post Office has increased “a lot” this year compared to last year, Burley said. Much of the increase has come in the number of flat-rate boxes shipped by customers. “If it fits, it ships,” is the slogan for those boxes, Burley said. Anything that fits in a particular size box ships for a set price.
The busiest delivery days of the year originally were projected to be Dec. 15 and 16, but Burley said that could easily stretch into next week.
“We’re Santa’s helpers,” Burley said. “People trust us to ship their items at Christmas time.”
Various surveys show that the postal service is the most-trusted federal agency and ranks in the top 10 most trusted businesses in the United States, he said, pointing out that the postal service is a self-supporting agency that receives no tax money.
“We are one of few government agencies that don’t get tax money,” he said.
Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, the U.S. Postal Service expects to handle 16 billion pieces of mail, Burley said.
It’s not too late to get holiday mail or packages delivered by Christmas to most places, shipping officials say.
People who mail cards or letters within the United States by Monday, Dec. 20, using regular mail, can expect their items to be delivered before Christmas Day, Burley said.
Mail addressed to a Montana address can be sent as late as Wednesday, Dec. 22, by regular mail and will be delivered before the holiday. If people use Express Mail to send items to out-of-state addresses, the deadline for delivery before Christmas is Wednesday, Dec. 22.
Mail is delivered and post offices are open as usual on Christmas Eve but no regular mail is delivered on Christmas Day. Post offices are closed on Christmas Day, too. However, special delivery of Express Mail for Saturday delivery is available in some areas, Burley said.
The deadline to send packages via FedEx Express for delivery before Christmas is Thursday, Dec. 23.
The last day to ship a package via UPS for pre-Christmas delivery is also Dec. 23.
Officials with FedEx and UPS couldn’t provide specific data for the Kalispell area, but both those private businesses report their worldwide volume has increased this year.
FedEx had its busiest day of the year globally on Dec. 13, when 16 million packages were shipped. That is double the volume of a normal delivery day for FedEx, spokesman Steve Barber said.
Yet FedEx officials expect Monday, Dec. 20, to be their busiest day of the year, he said.
“Between Thanksgiving and Christmas we expect 223 million shipments to move through our system,” Barber said. That translates to an 11 percent increase from that time period a year ago.
The week of Dec. 13 to 18 should be the company’s biggest week of the year, he said, with 63 million shipments expected in those six days. A year ago, 57.5 million shipments were sent in the same week.
UPS shipments also are up this year, spokeswoman Kristen Petrella said.
UPS expects Wednesday, Dec. 22, to be its busiest day of the year, handling 24 million packages across the world that day.
This holiday season, volume with the company is up 7.5 percent from 2009, reaching an expected 430 million packages this year.
“We’re well prepared for this,” Petrella said. “This is our 104th holiday shipping season. More people trust us with their holiday packages than anyone else.”
Reporter Shelley Ridenour may be reached at 758-4439 or by e-mail at sridenour@dailyinterlake.com.