Fedex, UPS and USPS gear up for holiday
The holiday shopping season has officially kicked off and shoppers – many from the comfort of their couch – are checking off items from their lists.
Demand for delivery of goods already has been on the rise as more and more people are forced to forgo visiting brick-and-mortar stores.
Delivery services including U.S. Postal Service, Fedex and UPS know they are facing a busy holiday season and are warning customers to ship early to ensure holiday gifts are under the Christmas tree on Dec. 25.
Cory Hartquist, a spokesperson for Fedex, said the company is preparing for what promises to be an unprecedented peak by ramping up resources, increasing capacity and collaborating with customers.
“Given volume levels, there is an industry-wide capacity challenge that may lead to service levels across the entire industry that are different from past years,” he said.
Online holiday sales are expected to top $189 billion in the United States, that’s 33% more than in 2019, according to Adobe Analytics.
Salesforce, a customer relationship management platform, forecast in October that the number of packages this season would exceed shipping capacity by 5%. Up to 700 million packages face potential shipping delays.
Employees at the Massillon Post Office already have noticed the increase in traffic. They anticipate the lines to get longer as more and more people send Christmas cards and ship gifts to family near and far.
Before the holiday stamps arrived, customers were trying to purchase the postage stamps to get an early start on the season.
While visiting family in Massillon, Madison Davis, a Dayton resident, stopped by the post office to get Christmas stamps to send out her cards early.
“I’ve noticed it is taking a week to get mail here,” she said. “It normally took two days.”
Naddia Dhalai, U.S. Postal Service communications specialist for Northern Ohio and the Ohio Valley, said the holiday season is nothing new for the post office.
“This is our season,” she said. “We having everything in place to have a successful holiday season.”
With that being said, she warned customers to not wait until the last minute.
“If you really want to get it there before the holidays, ship it as soon as you can,” Dhalai added.
The U.S. Postal Service is expected to deliver about 800 million cards, parcels and letters this holiday.
Fedex expects online shopping and shipping volumes will break last year’s records several times over.
PRE-COVID, Fedex projected the U.S. domestic market would hit 100 million packages each day by 2026. The market is now expected to hit the mark three years sooner with 96% of that growth coming from e-commerce.
The holiday shopping season will look very different from past seasons, said Haithem Zourrig, associate professor of marketing at Kent Stark.
COVID-19 has changed they way consumers are shopping.
Overall, holiday sales will be flat but online sales will skyrocket, he said.
With consumers having more money to spend this holiday season after vacations and entertainment expenses have been put on hold because of the virus, The National Retail Federation expects holiday sales in November and December to rise between 3.6% and 5.2% from last year.
The National Retail Federation is projecting most of that increase will come from online sales, between 20% and 30% this year.
Experts are warning customers to shop early and ship early this holiday season. Some deadlines to keep in mind:
Fedex Home Delivery - Dec. 15
Fedex Ground - Dec. 15