Post offices are bracing for the annual seasonal surge in mail over the coming weeks and U.S. Postal Service (USPS) has assured customers in an update that it is ready to deliver on its performance promises.
The organization typically delivers 800 million packages between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. During the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, National Public Radio reported that the USPS was struggling with late Christmas deliveries as an unprecedented number of Americans used online shopping.
But, as Thanksgiving approaches this week and the countdown to Christmas and the New Year is well underway, USPS Chief Retail and Delivery Officer and Executive Vice President Dr. Joshua Colin said: "Thanks to the substantial progress we have made under the Delivering for America plan, we are ready and confident to handle the holiday surge."
"Our ability to move packages and mail throughout our network has never been stronger. USPS continues to be the most affordable and reliable way to ship packages and mail this holiday season and year-round."
The organization "is primed and ready to deliver exceptional service during the 2024 holiday rush thanks in large part to the investments and strategies identified in its 10-year Delivering for America plan," says the document published on the USPS website.
Due to improvements already carried out under the plan, some 98 percent of the nation's population currently receives their mail and packages in under three days, the USPS says.
Key investments made ahead of this year's holiday season include "revitalizing" 83 sorting and delivery centers, hiring 7,500 seasonal employees, investing in 506 new package sorting machines, using new "next generation delivery vehicles," and shifting away from air transportation to a redesigned "more reliable ground transportation system," the statement added.
"The United States Postal Service's portfolio of shipping products make holiday shipping easy," said Steve Montieth, USPS chief customer and marketing officer and executive vice president. "Both USPS Ground Advantage and USPS Priority Mail are priced lower than competitors, meaning customers can save more this holiday season. So, ship early and enjoy your holiday season."
Cards and gifts will soon be flying around the country to reach friends and relatives, while children will be mailing letters to Santa. But the USPS has been preparing for months to cope with this year's holiday season.
Back in October, officials showed off their designs for new holiday stamps, one featuring a 17th-century traditional image of the Madonna with a baby Jesus, while others were inspired by Mexican folk art.
The USPS also released their list of send-by dates, guiding customers with postal deadlines to ensure mail reaches intended recipients in time.
The USPS partnered with games store Toys R Us in September ahead of the Postal Service's annual "Operation Santa" tradition, which matches up anonymous gift-givers with children who have written to Santa with a request.
The upbeat news follows a tricky year for the USPS, which was hit with a backlash after hiking stamp prices over the summer. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said he had stepped into a "broken business model" when he started working at the agency in 2020, and warned it could run out of money in the future.
"Failure to adequately adapt to social, economic, technological, and industrial changes have destroyed giants in their industry—Kodak, Motorola, Blockbuster—in just a few short years," DeJoy told the National Postal Forum in June. "The demands of the changes experienced by the Postal Service were magnitudes greater. In addition, these organizations did not have a Congress or a regulator to contend with."
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