Montgomery USPS facility ready to handle holiday workload

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) - Christmas is quickly approaching, and many people are making those holiday purchases and preparing to send them out to family and friends.

This makes for a busy time of year for the United States Postal Service. USPS has been delivering the holidays for 257 years, and this year is no different.

“We’ve been preparing for this holiday season since January of this year, said Debra Fetterly, USPS woman for the Alabama/Mississippi district. “Like our theme says, we’re holiday ready.”

WSFA 12 News got a tour inside the mail processing facility in Montgomery. Inside, employees were hard at work postmarking letters and cards and processing packages. At the beginning of October, USPS brought on 28,000 peak holiday season hires and deployed more than 130 new package processing machines throughout the country to meet the demand.

“That is helping. We have the capacity now to process 60 million packages daily during the holiday season, as compared to last year was 53 million,” said Fetterly.

But just as the holidays are quickly approaching, so are the mailing deadlines to send presents to your friends and loved ones.

“The holidays do tend to creep up on us. As far as deadlines, the recommended deadlines, we have first-class mail would be December 17. December 19 is for Priority Mail. And if you’re still shopping, you’re one of those procrastinators like me, you have until December 23 for Priority Mail Express,” said Fetterly.

Fetterly said it’s always best to go to your local post office early in the day and avoid reusing boxes if you can.

“If you’re going to use a reused box, make sure that it’s sturdy and cross out any extraneous information on it. And you want to make sure that you have the proper address and that it’s clear on the package,” said Fetterly.

A popular holiday present is gift cards. These can be tricky when it comes to mailing. The USPS says it’s not uncommon for the gift card to get separated from the envelope, so attach the address somewhere on that card and take it out of the packaging. Also, keep the receipt. Don’t send it through the mail.

To learn more about shipping deadlines and package rules, click here.

If you are sending packages to military addresses abroad, click here.

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