Busiest Mailing Day of the Holiday Season Approaches

Media invited for a behind-the-scenes look in mail processing center

HAMPTON ROADS, VA — The Postal Service will deliver 20 billion cards, letters and packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Monday, December 17, is expected to be the busiest mailing day when more than 275 million cards and letters will be processed — more than three times the average on any given day. The total national mail volume on December 17, including packages, is projected to rise to one billionpieces. The busiest delivery day of the holiday mailing season will be Wednesday, December 19.

On Monday, December 10, the second busiest mailing day of the season, nearly one millionletters and cards from cities throughout Hampton Roads and the Eastern Shore were postmarked at the Norfolk Processing and Distribution Center. Local postal officials announced a special Sunday collection from all blue collection boxes in the Hampton Roads area (ZIP Codes beginning with 233 through 237) on Sunday, December 16. “History tells me we’ll have well over one million postmarks to run on Monday,” said Norfolk Processing and Distribution Center Manager Delores Shearin-Lyle. “Providing a Sunday collection gives our local mailers a chance to beat the Monday surge and we can start the postmarking and handling process earlier.” Shearin-Lyle also said the mail should be deposited in collection boxes, but not lobby drop slots, no later than 2 p.m. on Sunday.

The media is invited to the Norfolk Processing and Distribution Center, 600 Church Street, on Monday, December 17, at 3:30 p.m. for photo opportunities in the retail lobby and on the mail processing work floor. There will be demonstrations of time-saving online services from the U.S. Postal Service that allow customers to ship packages or create, address and mail holiday cards.

For safety’s sake, work floor visitors are asked to wear slip resistant, closed-toe shoes. Communications Coordinator Fran Sansone will be onsite to escort the media to the work floor.

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Please Note: For broadcast quality video and audio, photo stills and other media resources, visit 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.