Courier drivers scramble to get parcels out before Christmas

If you think this month has been busy, spare a thought for the country’s courier drivers.

Drivers at DHL are delivering one parcel every 1.5 seconds in December as they scramble to get parcels out before Christmas.

The company is expecting to process 380,000 orders just in December, or about 19,333 shipments a day (based on 18 working days of the month). This equates to about 40 shipments per minute or one parcel every 1.5 seconds.

DHL has 100 drivers, including contractors nationwide, delivering about 200 parcels each. The company’s New Zealand country manager, Mark Foy, said it had hired extra staff for six weeks.

He said December 17 was the busiest day of the year for the business this year.

‘‘The Monday a week before Christmas is the biggest because of the orders that come from Europe and the US over the weekend, and they land here on the Sunday for Monday delivery.’’

Courier drivers do two lots of deliveries in a day – one early in the morning and one at midday.

New Zealand Post chief operating officer Mark Stewart said the number of deliveries from online shopping was 30 per cent higher this month compared with the same time last year.

Stewart said the company delivered 2 million additional parcels in November and December last year and was expecting to surpass that this year.

‘‘We’ve put on 600 more people, and have increased both our road and air network capacity. We’re expecting all records to be broken,’’ he said.

Black Friday, Cyber Monday and Singles Day had also spiked NZ Post deliveries.