Although this is the busiest week of the year for UPS, Thursday will mark the busiest day of the year for the package delivery company.
This week UPS will deliver more than 120 million packages.
Dec. 22 will be the busiest day of the week for UPS when nearly 26 million packages will be delivered – roughly 300 packages every second. The company expects to deliver almost 25 million packages on several other days this week.
The UPS Airlines will add more than 400 additional flights per day and, on its busiest day, process 3 million express shipments in a 24-hour period through its Louisville Worldport facility.
For those holiday shopping procrastinators, they can ship a package as late as Dec. 23 — using UPS Next Day Air with Saturday delivery — and have their gifts arrive on Christmas Eve.
What’s more, UPS also will manage more than 58 million online requests during the busiest tracking day of the year — Tuesday, Dec. 20.
To handle all those extra packages, UPS hired 55,000 seasonal employees across the U.S. to work as driver helpers or package sorters, loaders or unloaders. The number of seasonal hires is 5,000 more than last year’s projection.
UPS will have more than 90,000 vehicles in use. To handle the package volume influx, the company plans to add 34 chartered aircraft to its operational fleet of 223.