BOSTON — We are now 10 days out from Christmas and the already overwhelmed shipping world is bracing for its busiest holiday rush. Customers at the UPS Store in the South End told Boston 25 News, “it is wild in there for Christmas.”
Lyndsay Pingel and her sister were sending gifts home to Wisconsin.
“We’ll see what happens,” Pingel said. “Hopefully it makes it on time.”
“The volume is really heavy. Obviously, due to the pandemic, more people have been forced to order online,” said Chris Peterson, the UPS Store manager.
Every major shipping company is dealing with unprecedented volume.
Related: Holiday shipping deadlines: When to send packages via USPS, FedEx, UPS
“We expect to see a record number of packages this year,” the United States Postal Service said. “For that reason, we’re encouraging customers to get any gift items in the mail as soon as possible.”
“This holiday season has been the largest in Amazon’s history, including the largest for independent businesses,” Amazon added.
Chris Peterson has been in this line of work for 12 years and said this is the busiest season ever.
“We’ve been doing this a long, long time and we know what we are doing,” he said.
Some customers are already seeing delays so their strategy is to stay positive.
“It might be a Valentine’s Day gift, I guess,” Pingel joked.
Both UPS and FedEx, the two main shipping companies helping move the vaccine as it goes out, said they have very specific equipment and channels for their medical transportation needs – something they have been doing for years and years. So, they said, moving the vaccine and moving holiday packages are two separate entities and the two workloads are independent.
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