Estimated read time: 1-2 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
Fifteen days to go before Christmas. If you haven't sent off those cards, letters and packages, the clock is ticking. The earlier the better, as they say.
The numbers will still be huge this year, but for the first time neither UPS nor FedEx are making their annual holiday forecasts in terms of the busiest shipping days.
The reasons for that is the economy. Because of it's downturn, there is increased likelihood that people are paring down their shopping lists, and therefore the number of packages they'll send.
But the U.S. Postal Service has issued a number: 19 billion cards, letters and packages to be delivered. That's about the same as last year.
If you haven't mailed yet, keep Dec. 16 in mind for having packages delivered in time for Christmas; cards and letters by the Dec. 20.
For the postal service, crunch time falls in the last two weeks before Christmas. "We handle about a billion pieces of mail every single day during the holidays, at least later in the holidays, just at the post office. It's amazing compared to what we handle -- 700 million a day -- during the year," said Ron Hubrich, spokesman for USPS.
Last year, the high-volume day for UPS was on Dec. 19, one week before Christmas, with 22 million packages handled on that day. UPS isn't making a forecast this year, but it's probably safe to say that they'll be very busy about the same time.
FedEx is also not predicting a volume forecast. But on last year's peak day, more than 11 million packages were handled. On an average day, FedEx handles 7.5 million.
Bottom line: Some people may be cutting back on how many gifts they buy and send this year, but the delivery people will still be very busy.
E-mail: kmccord@ksl.com
