(NewsNation) — The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) says it added thousands of seasonal hires, hundreds of new package processing machines and even leased extra space to handle a significant increase in packages this holiday season.
“For the last couple of years, we had the pandemic, so a lot of folks had been shopping online. So this year, we have those folks shopping online, plus we have customers who are coming into retail stores and shipping with us,” Debbie Fetterly of the USPS said on NewsNation’s “Rush Hour” on Monday.
It adds up to 60 million packages able to be shipped out each day.
Other companies are also working to keep up with increased holiday demand. In New York, FedEx rolled out electric carts, allowing sleek, four-wheeled electric carts to drop off packages instead of delivery trucks sitting idly along a curb.
According to the company, the innovation makes deliveries more efficient and saves the general public time in traffic.
The technology is just in time too, as holiday shipping has not slowed down due to a steady pace in holiday shopping.
According to the National Retail Federation Forecast, sales between November and December would go up between 6% to 8% from last year.
“This has been the best year for discounts in many years,” Ted Rossman, a senior industry analyst at Bankrate.com said Monday on “Rush Hour.” “This has been the best year for discounts in many years. People are definitely looking for value this year.”
Time is running out for those who have not shipped out their packages yet. Monday is the last day for USPS’s priority mail service, and Friday is the last day for priority mail express.
That may be affected by a winter storm headed to parts of the country later this week. The USPS told “Rush Hour” that bad weather could lead to some shipping delays.
Forecasters are warning of treacherous holiday travel and life-threatening cold for much of the nation as an arctic air mass blows into the already-frigid southern United States.
The incoming arctic air arrives as an earlier storm system in the northeastern U.S. gradually winds down after burying parts of the region under 2 feet of snow.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
