'Crunch time' as Christmas nears record package shipments threaten on time deliveries

According to the U.S. Postal Service's holiday package tracker, nearly 8 billion packages have been processed for Christmas this year. In 2022, the postal service processed 12 billion packages for the entire holiday season. 

Fortunately, in time for the holiday season, USPS has opened a new processing facility in North Carolina. This is just one of the 60 new facilities USPS will open in the next 10 years, according to their Delivering for American Plan. 

The facility has some of the best technology to push packages to destinations all over the world. 

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"There’s seven high speed package sorting machines in this facility, we had 350 high speed package sorting machines installed across the country in the last 3 years," USPS Spokesperson Philip Bogenberger tells FOX. 

The Postal Service say these sorting machines work 24/7, helping process packages twelve times faster than they have in the past with manual sorting. 

USPS says the high-speed sorting machines have increased efficiency, and they're seeing it first-hand at the new facility in Gastonia, west of Charlotte.

Margaret Ford, Gastonia's USPS Plant Manager says it "cuts down on forklifts going on the floor, potential hazards, less people have to touch the mail just for that part of the process; and it just helps us to be efficient and streamline the operation."

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USPS says this is the third holiday season under the Delivering For America plan, where the Postal Service made significant investments in its network. 100 machines have been installed since last holiday season. 

The Gastonia facility has been open for just over a month, Ford says they're still working to process 350,000 packages a day. As of now, all packages in the area will be processed, to be shipped out across the world. 

"It comes in here and then we send it out to the world," says Ford, "so anything a customer is mailing anywhere in the world, we process here in this facility."

USPS has the capacity to process 70 million packages per day, and the average time for USPS to deliver a mail piece or packages is just two and a half days. But, the days are winding down until it's Christmas. They say don't wait too long to send out packages. 
 

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The deadline to ship regular ground shipping with FedEx is Friday, December 15. The U.S. Postal Service is Saturday, December 16. UPS's deadline for ground shipping is Monday, December 18. 

 But USPS says it's best not to risk it, "if you are sending locally or regionally, you might have a day or two, but I wouldn’t necessarily take that chance."