UPS expects to deliver more than 120 million packages around the world this year in the last weekbefore Christmas, up more than 6 per cent compared to the 113 million delivered during last year’s ‘
peak week’.That growth demonstrates once again the recent trend of people delaying online shopping untiljust before Christmas, UPS said. “Before the explosion of e-commerce, the holiday peak seasonstretched from Thanksgiving [the fourth Thursday of November] to Christmas; now, it’s beencompressed to the last two weeks before Christmas,” the company observed.
This year, in a dramatic underscoring of the trend, UPS is projecting it will see fivedifferent days on which its deliveries will approach or exceed 25 million, all within the last 10days before Christmas. Last year, there was only one day on which deliveries surpassed 25 million.A delivery volume of 25 million packages represents a 60 per cent increase compared to UPS’s normaldaily volume of 15.6 million, and amounts to the delivery of almost 300 packages every second.
The 2011 shipping season is expected to reach its apex on 22 December, UPS’s peak shippingday, when the company projects its delivery volume worldwide will approach 26 million. UPS projectsits peak air day this year will be Friday, 23 December, with more than 6 million deliveries of airpackages on that day, compared to a normal air volume of 3 million. UPS will fly more than 400additional flight segments per day during peak week.
To handle all those packages, UPS said it will be hiring 55,000 seasonal employees across theUS this year, to work either as driver helpers or package sorters, loaders or unloaders. Thecompany is projecting its busiest tracking day of the season will occur on 20 December, with morethan 58 million online package tracking requests.
“Early indications point to a solid holiday shopping and shipping season,” said AlanGershenhorn, UPS chief sales and marketing officer. “To handle the holiday rush and maintainthe reliability that’s needed when shopping close to Christmas, we’re flexing every part of ourglobal small-package network.”
He said this year would be the first season the company has offered its UPS My Choiceservice, which gives US residential customers visibility and control of their arriving shipments. “No other carrier offers consumers this level of control,” Gershenhorn claimed.
UPS My Choice was launched in September, aiming to help avoid the disappointment and hassleof missing a home delivery by empowering the customer to take control of UPS deliveries beforearrival. The service provides a delivery alert a day in advance, along with notice of anestimated four-hour delivery window, along with reroute and rescheduling options, and visibilitytools available through a computer or mobile phone.
