Santa Claus may have his elves hustling to fill orders in the workshop at the North Pole, but for the millions of Americans doing their holiday shopping online, there’s an even more dedicated crew working in overdrive to ensure packages arrive intact and on time: the United States Postal Service (USPS).
Each year, the USPS delivers about 800 million packages across the nation during the holiday period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. Nationwide, that means thousands of additional employees are on hand to work with new technology like package-sorting machines to get millions of parcels out for delivery every day.
At Santa Barbara’s Mail Processing and Distribution Center — a nondescript beige and green facility tucked off of Storke Road in Goleta — more than 200 employees are buzzing around, sorting letters and packages piled into large bins and loaded into trucks to make their way to mailboxes and doorways across the county.
It’s not exactly a winter wonderland, but inside the 230,000-square-foot industrial facility, there is just as much holiday magic happening, with 14 delivery bar code sorters, three “advanced face canceler” systems (high-speed letter sorters), an automated parcel and bundle sorter, and a small parcel-sorting system to help the team deal with the flood of last-minute deliveries.
Many of these packages are shipped through USPS Ground Advantage, with the new fleet of more reliable vehicles — including some of the revamped zero-emission electric models — which are all part of the Postal Service’s “10-year Delivering for America” plan to increase efficiency and reliability.
“Thanks to the substantial progress we have made under the Delivering for America plan, we are ready and confident to handle the holiday surge,” said USPS Chief Retail and Delivery Officer and Executive Vice President Dr. Joshua Colin. “Our ability to move packages and mail throughout our network has never been stronger. USPS continues to be the most affordable and reliable way to ship packages and mail this holiday season and year-round.”
Local post offices will remain open, and deliveries will continue rain or shine, every day except Christmas and New Year’s Day.
