US Postal Service urges customers to send holiday mail early

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- The U.S. Postal Service advises people every year to send their holiday gifts early, and with more people spending the holidays apart this year, they’re expecting an even higher volume of presents sent by mail.

USPS officials say mailing traffic is expected to increase by December 7. On Dec. 14th alone, they’re expecting 13,000,000 people to send mail.

Officials say they’ve seen close to Christmas level mail volumes since March of 2020.

Even with over 600,000 employees, the postal service says it’s impossible to gauge if it will be enough to keep up with demand. In Colorado alone, they’ve hired over 3,000 people to keep up with demand.

“The Denver processing plant, which is the fourth largest processing plant in the nation, has rented additional warehouses to keep up with the demand we expect to see this season," says USPS Strategic Communications Specialist James Boxrud.

The postal service says they don’t have a hard number of how many pieces of mail they’re expecting this holiday season, but they do know where a lot of the demand will come from.

Officials say they're expecting to deliver over 15,000 pounds of military mail to troops overseas.

The postal service says military families mailing packages overseas should send them out by December 11th if they want them to arrive by Christmas day.

The Postal Service recommends the following mailing and shipping deadlines for expected delivery by December 25th to Air/Army Post Office/Fleet Post Office/Diplomatic Post Office and domestic addresses*:

•   Dec. 9   — APO/FPO/DPO (ZIP Code 093 only) Priority Mail and First-Class Mail

•   Dec. 11 — APO/FPO/DPO (all other ZIP Codes) Priority Mail and First-Class Mail services

•   Dec. 15 — USPS Retail Ground service

•   Dec. 18 — APO/FPO/DPO (except ZIP Code 093) USPS Priority Mail Express service

•    Dec. 18 — First-Class Mail service (including greeting cards)

•    Dec. 18 — First-class packages (up to 15.99 ounces)

•     Dec. 19 — Priority Mail service

•     Dec. 23 — Priority Mail Express* service

Alaska

•     Dec. 18 — Alaska to/from Continental U.S. First-Class Mail

•     Dec. 19 — Alaska to/from Continental U.S. Priority Mail

•     Dec. 21 — Alaska to/from Continental U.S. Priority Mail Express

Hawaii

•      Dec. 15 — Hawaii to/from mainland Priority Mail and First-Class Mail

•      Dec. 21 — Hawaii to/from mainland Priority Mail Express