By Adam Studzinski
BLOOMINGTON – It’s Christmas season and that means post offices are in their busiest time of the year. Bloomington Post Master Mark Ford said mail carriers are handling roughly double the amount of parcels they would during the rest of the year.
“The (United States) Postal Service as a whole is looking at processing about nearly 16 billion cards, letters and packages during this holiday season, which runs from pretty much from Thanksgiving through Christmas,” said Ford. “About 600 million of that would be packages.”
Ford added that is an 11 percent increase compared to 2014. In Bloomington, he said they’re looking at about a 10 percent increase.
How does the post office handle all those deliveries? Ford explained part of the answer is delivery on Sundays.
“I know this past Sunday we had a relatively large crew of carriers out delivering all day. We delivered about 5,000 packages on Sunday this past week,” he said.
Ford said they’ve also had open hours at various post offices in Bloomington-Normal on Sundays, and will be doing so again this Sunday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Despite the increase in volume, Ford said mail carriers are not having a lot of trouble keeping deliveries on time. That has be thanks in part to the fact there has not been a lot of adverse weather conditions so far this season.
Adam Studzinski can be reached at adam.studzinski@cumulus.com.
