Number of the Day
Americans Will Ship 3 Billion Packages This Holiday Season
A record number of packages are moving through the nation’s shipping infrastructure this December
3 billion: That’s how many packages are expected to flow through America’s shipping infrastructure this holiday season, according to The New York Times. That’s 800 million more than last year, and an estimated 7.2 million more packages per day than the system has the capacity to handle.
Smaller businesses that have had to switch to an e-commerce-focused strategy during the pandemic will be especially reliant on overloaded services like FedEx, UPS, and the USPS this December to make sure that orders reach customers in time for holiday gifting. Amazon, meanwhile, is taking as few chances as it can, having spent most of this year building out its own delivery network. Amazon currently delivers at least 67% of its own package volume, with plans to expand that figure to 85% by the end of 2022. It’s also been on a hiring spree this year, with warehouse workers leading the fastest workforce expansion in corporate history.
