DULLES, Va. — With a little over a week until Christmas, some of Santa’s helpers are putting in overtime at the U.S. Postal Service to get your mail and packages to you on time.
One of those helpers is Henry Payne. This year marks his 51st holiday season.
“It’s always an exciting time, and each one gets better,” Payne said, humbly showing off his 50-year pin.
He worked his way up from casual custodian to plant manager at the Dulles plant, only recently considering retiring.
“I happen to love my job and the things that we do,” he said.
Payne certainly isn’t the only long-timer at the Dulles plant.
Benita Sprow has been with USPS for 33 years, saying she keeps coming back because of the family-like friends she formed when she first started.
“It’s a good job and good money,” she added, laughing.
As one can imagine, the end of the year marks the busy season for USPS.
“What goes into you guys getting the package?” Sprow pondered. “Oh gosh – too much!... It gets crazy.”
Letters and packages make their way through multiple sorting machines – automatically reading addresses and directing them to the appropriate bin – before being loaded onto delivery trucks.
“We processed [Tuesday] night over a million pieces and letters and probably about 200,000 in packages,” Payne said.
He said that’s about a 15% increase from last year.
Payne said the biggest change he’s seen during his tenure is the addition of new technology.
“The amount of things that are automated now than manually when I came in 50 years ago,” he said.”
One of their nine letter-sorting machines can process 30,000 letters an hour.
Every day at the Dulles Plant, one logistics manager shared that about 30 trucks travel in and out each day.
Each one, he said, fits about 48 giant boxes filled with 50 to 100 packages each.
The Postal Service’s new website shows a real-time tracker of just how many parcels they’re handling this holiday season. As of Friday morning, that number is up to 8 billion, and counting
With Christmas around the corner – so are shipping deadlines.
Saturday, December 16 is the deadline to ship first-class mail and Ground Advantage, a new shipping option that delivers in two to five business days.
The next deadline is December 20 for Priority Mail, and December 21 is the deadline for Priority Mail Express.
A spokesperson for USPS said their big news this year is that they have no surcharges this holiday season, so shipping through the Postal Service should be your most affordable option.