Postal Service Ready for Busiest Mailing and Delivery Days

Americans will entrust almost 1 billion pieces of mail with the U.S. Postal Service on Monday, Dec. 17, the busiest mailing day of the year. About 275 million pieces of that total will be cards and letters, more than three times the average daily volume of 82 million.

The Postal Service also is seeing a dramatic increase in holiday mail to military installations in Iraq and Afghanistan, with average weekly volume quadrupling the first week in December to 4,000 pounds of mail. For the first 14 days in December, there were 12 additional 747 cargo aircraft dispatched with mail to the Middle East than during the same time last year. That’s almost one extra 747 lift every day. About 20 million pounds of mail is expected to be delivered to military installations around the world this season.

Who:
Beth Fisk, USPS Customer Relations Coordinator, Tulsa OK.

What:
Busiest mailing day of the year: Monday, Dec. 17
Busiest delivery day of the year: Wednesday, Dec. 19

When:
Beth Fisk will be available for media interviews Monday, Dec. 17, beginning at 9 a.m.

Where:
Local Post Office locations or TV stations.

Audio/Video:
Audio:

Retail lobby nat sound
Mail being sorted
Customers in Post Office lobby

Video:

B-Roll package is available
Customers in Post Office lobbies
Mail sorting
Letter carriers delivering mail

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Please Note: Broadcast quality b-roll of mail processing, sorting and delivery are available via PATHFIRE and standard broadcast through the USPS Newsroom at www.usps.com/news.

An independent federal agency, the U.S. Postal Service is the only delivery service that visits every address in the nation, 146 million homes and businesses, six days a week. It has 37,000 retail locations and relies on the sale of postage, products, and services to pay for operating expenses, not tax dollars. The Postal Service has annual revenues of $75 billion and delivers nearly half the world’s mail.