USPS receives more than 13.2 billion packages during the holiday season

As the number of orders increases during the peak season, the number of parcels also surges. Recently, the United States Postal Service (USPS) announced the parcel volume for this year's holiday shopping season. Data showed that more than 13.2 billion pieces of mail and parcels were received during the period .

Last year's peak season volume increase caused a collapse in the entire shipping industry, causing many packages to be delivered weeks late. The USPS said it did a lot of preparation work before this year's peak season, and these measures have achieved good results in dealing with the holiday surge.

The USPS has made operational improvements and strategic investments based on a 10-year plan , which has enabled the USPS to increase its daily processing capacity by 13 million packages . Although the volume of transactions surged to 2.8 billion after Thanksgiving , its preparations helped alleviate delays.

The USPS said it took an average of 2.7 days to deliver mail or packages through the Postal Service network between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve, an increase of nearly 4% from the 12.7 billion packages accepted during the same time period in 2020 .

USPS began preparing for the 2021 holiday season early last year . These preparations not only corresponded to the challenges faced last year, but also aligned with the Postal Service’s 10-year plan , Delivering for America .

For example, 185,000 new employees were added , including the rehiring of 63,000 former employees and the hiring of 40,000 seasonal employees; the facility floor space was expanded to resolve bottlenecks and improve the flow of mail and parcels; 112 new parcel sorting machines and more than 50 parcel systems capable of sorting large parcels were installed ; and diversified and reliable transportation methods were adopted.

There is a serious driver shortage this year, and transportation in all industries has been affected, especially adding greater pressure to e-commerce delivery. USPS has alleviated the driver shortage problem by increasing the utilization rate of long-distance transportation.

But at the same time, the volume of returns is also increasing. UPS recently said that it is expected to process more than 60 million return packages between November 14 and January 22, an increase of 10% over last year. It is predicted that the value of returned goods after the holidays may reach 112 billion to 114 billion US dollars, of which about 43 billion to 45 billion US dollars will come from e-commerce orders.

Although the peak season has passed, the epidemic has recurred, and sellers should also pay more attention to logistics dynamics.

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