The Postal Service has entered the holiday season’s final stretch.
Across the nation, employees are working hard to accept, process and deliver the last batch of holiday mail and packages.
“This is the Postal Service’s busiest season, and it’s also a season that brings us so much joy. We love delivering holiday cards and packages to every doorstep,” said Michael Willard, plant manager at the Jacksonville, FL, Regional Processing and Distribution Center.
The organization had accepted 9.89 billion mailpieces and packages by 9:30 a.m. Eastern on Dec. 24, according to an online counter that has been running since the peak season began on Thanksgiving.
This year, USPS prepared for the holidays by installing more package sorting machines in processing facilities, updating service standards to better deliver mail and packages within a given region, rolling out new delivery vehicles and making other improvements.
At the Jacksonville plant, for example, USPS installed a state-of-the-art sorter that can process 14,000 packages an hour, up from 9,000 packages an hour on previous machines.
The new machine “is just one of the many improvements that allow us to deliver the exceptional service our customers have come to expect from USPS during the holidays,” Willard said.
Despite the challenges that come with a heavier workload, employees say they remain focused on getting the job done.
“I love making my customers happy,” said Jesse Mehew, a Grass Valley, CA, letter carrier walks more than 11 miles a day, according to YubaNet.com, a local news website.
He has a Zen-like approach to handling the stress of peak season.
“I just stop, take a breath and move on. We do one mailbox at a time,” he sa
