Delivery companies welcome arrival of holiday stress
Published: Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 4:03 a.m.
Last Modified: Sunday, December 13, 2009 at 4:03 a.m.
Shortly after 7 p.m. on Monday, 12,000 FedEx employees in Memphis, Tenn., will stretch and flex in concert and gulp holiday-colored sports drinks in preparation for processing 7,000 packages a minute.
At United Parcel Service air headquarters in Louisville, Ky., employees will be poised to handle 100,000 boxes from Zappos, the online shoe emporium just 12 miles away.
To release holiday tension, some Zappos employees sing karaoke on breaks or wear elf hats as they load conveyor belts with boots and shoes.
Under the twinkling canopy that is the constellation of incoming aircraft in the Southern skies, FedEx and UPS -- the nation's two biggest private package delivery companies -- will work at a frenzied pace to kick off the busiest shipping week of the year.
This holiday season, with the country still pulling out of a steep recession, gifts will be delivered with a little more glee.
U.S. retail sales showed a slight increase in November, and delivery companies are expecting to see the resulting rise in holiday package traffic.
"We are already seeing signs of it earlier than years before," said John Dunavant, the vice president of Memphis operations for FedEx.
On last year's busiest shipping day, FedEx says, it delivered 12 million packages; this year, the company is projecting 13 million.
"We always had the capacity," Dunavant said, "but this year we surely expect the aircraft to be more full."
The FedEx fleet of 170 planes that will take over the Memphis runways between 10:30 p.m. Monday and 4:30 a.m. Tuesday, will have an addition: the company's third Boeing 777, which Dunavant said provided more capacity and greater fuel efficiency.
By Tuesday, the packages will be in places like Canarsie, Brooklyn, where Vito Randazzo, a 20-year veteran courier for FedEx, will load his trucks at a warehouse at 6:30 a.m. and begin a 13-hour route in Brooklyn.
With the confluence of Hanukkah and pre-Christmas deliveries, his loads have already grown. "It feels good when you make to a delivery and you hear a woman say to you, 'Oh, my daughter's gift is here already?' " Randazzo said Friday.
The swift gift-delivering requires armies of seasonal employees and year-round workers, like meteorologists who monitor the air and ground traffic.
"We prepare for this day all year," Dunavant said. "The only thing that can kill us is weather."
Mel Bradley, the manager of weather services for FedEx, said the weather for Memphis on the all-important Monday evening was going to be clear. He gathers forecasts for 150 airports twice daily, as well as for ground locations.
Both the retail and package industries could use some fortunate winds after the past months. In October, UPS announced that its third quarter profit fell by 43 percent, as shipments declined by 5.1 percent.
UPS declined to give a comparison of how its projected sales would compare with those of last year's dismal holiday. "We're predicting between Thanksgiving and Christmas that we'll deliver 400 million packages total, and that's slightly up from last year," said Karen Cole, a spokeswoman.
The busiest shipping day for UPS is Dec. 21, when it expects to deliver 22 million packages. The company calls Dec. 20 "Super Sunday" in Louisville and will add 37 planes that day, one more than last year.
Even if Monday is the peak shipping day for most retailers and FedEx, many e-commerce consumers could wait to order until Dec. 17, which more than 580 online retailers have designated as a free shipping day (with some strings attached).
The chocolate maker Jacques Torres said Internet sales were promising. "It looks like to me, it's going to be better," Torres said, as he geared up for Monday's peak day, with employees loading packages all day. FedEx will back up its trucks to collect the packages bound for Memphis and beyond. "Monday evening we are going to want to cry," Torres said about the pace.
But there is no rest for the weepy. "It's crazy on the Internet and then crazy into the store until even the 24th," Torres said.
But on Christmas? "We don't celebrate," he said. "We sleep."
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