Special deliveries

Piles of parcels have become the new norm for post offices during the holidays, but this season has seen even more deliveries than usual. Partly due to COVID-19 and partly due to bottlenecks in the system, the record for the number of parcels arriving to the Sundance branch in a single day has been well and truly smashed, according to Postmistress Heather Miller.

Actually, she says, the record has been broken twice in the last few weeks. The first time, almost inevitably, fell just before Christmas, when the Sundance branch received 676 packages in one day.

That’s just slightly higher than the record set in December, 2019 of 643 packages in a day. It’s considerably lower, on the other hand, than when the record was broken a second time on January 19.

One day after the branch was closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a total of 747 packages arrived for Sundance residents.

There are two reasons for the higher-than-usual volumes of mail, says Miller. The first is that more people are making use of the internet during the pandemic.

“I think it’s just a lot of people are ordering online because of COVID-19,” she says. “People started on that and then thought, this is actually pretty handy, so I think our parcel volume is going to stay up pretty high.”

The second reason is that sorting facilities nationwide have been feeling the strain over the last few weeks.

“The sorting facilities were getting behind because they didn’t have people and with the volume of packages,” Miller says.

This meant there was a bottleneck in deliveries, which caused a particularly high number to arrive in Sundance the day after the holiday.

“We’re closed, and yet the facilities are still sorting and mail is still moving,” she explains.

An early morning and hard work from all the staff meant that every package was ready for its recipient on the day of arrival, despite the extra volume. Miller expects package volumes to stay high for the foreseeable future.