The holidays are here, and so is the busy season for postal services.
The United States Postal Service’s busiest time of year is the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve, as millions mail out packages and cards to friends and family. As always, the message from the post office this season is to send holiday packages and mail sooner, rather than later.
During the 2021 holiday season, USPS accepted more than 13.2 billion letters, cards, flats and packages for delivery, with an average 2.7 days to deliver a mailpiece or package across the country, said Susan Wright, USPS Indiana spokesperson.
USPS officials expect this season to be just as busy, and have been preparing all year, Wright said. Nationwide, USPS hired hiring 20,000 seasonal employees, including 800 in Indiana.
This year is also the second year in the implementation of the Postmaster General’s $40 million Delivering for America plan to improve the post office over the next decade. Since the beginning of the year, USPS has installed 137 new package sorting machines across the country. This has increased package sorting capacity to 60 million packages per day, Wright said.
With the holiday season, the three main delivery services —USPS, FedEx and UPS — have set suggested deadlines to send mail and packages, in order to guarantee arrival by Christmas Day. Gifts can arrive on time with multiple services like ground, next day or same-day shipping. Additionally, with Christmas falling on Sunday, some deadlines are earlier than previous years.
For basic ground shipping, the last day recommended to mail for FedEx is Dec. 14, and Dec. 17 for USPS. UPS asks customers to visit their website to receive a quoted date for their ground shipping.
The latest recommended dates to ship gifts are a day or two before Christmas Day. Dec. 23 is the latest for USPS Priority Mail Express and FedEx SameDay, and Dec. 22 is the latest day for UPS Next Day Air.
For those who wish to send packages to the military, the deadline for delivery via first class and priority mail services by Christmas is Dec. 9, according to the USPS website.
A few price increases were also imposed this year for USPS, including the price of stamps increasing from 58 cents to 60 cents earlier this year.
Domestic shipping rates are also on a temporary increase for the holiday season, similar to last year. The temporary increases will be in place through Jan. 22 and will include domestic retail and commercial shipping products: Priority Mail Express, Priority Mail, First-Class Package Service, Parcel Select, USPS Retail Ground and Parcel Return Service. The increases are designed to cover extra costs during peak volume, USPS officials say.
USPS is also offering package pickups through the USPS Click-N-Ship program. This allows people to order Priority Mail boxes, shipping labels, postage with next-day package pickup.
HOLIDAY SHIPPING DEADLINES
USPS
Dec. 9 — Air/Army Post Office/Fleet Post Office/Diplomatic Post Office
Dec. 17 — USPS Retail Ground service
Dec. 17 — First-Class Mail service (including greeting cards)
Dec. 17 — First-Class packages (up to 15.99 ounces)
Dec. 19 — Priority Mail service
Dec. 23 — Priority Mail Express service
FedEx
Dec. 8 — ground economy
Dec. 14 — ground and home delivery
Dec. 20 — express saver
Dec. 20 — three-day freight
Dec. 21 — two day, two-day a.m. and two-day freight
Dec. 22 — overnight services and one-day freight
Dec. 23 — same day
UPS
UPS Ground — get a quote from ups.com/ctc
Dec. 20 — three-day select
Dec. 21 — second-day air services
Dec. 22 — next-day air services
