Post Offices Closed In Observance Of Thanksgiving
Peak Season Means Extra Mail and Package Volumes
Massachusetts — There will be no regular mail delivery or retail services available on Thursday, Nov. 25, as postal employees across the commonwealth celebrate Thanksgiving. But our carriers will still be delivering Priority Express and other guaranteed next day services.
This holiday, the Postal Service is reminding customers to shop and ship early.
Our online store is open 24/7 at usps.com and boasts plenty of gift-giving ideas from T-shirts to framed prints, toys and tote bags.
The 2020 holiday season was a record-setting year for the Postal Service. Specifically, 13 billion letters, cards and packages were processed and delivered under some of the most difficult circumstances we’ve faced in the past century.
For the 2021 peak season — the period between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day — the Postal Service will deliver more mail and packages to homes than any other shipper.
It’s anticipated that between 850 million and 950 million packages will be delivered for the holidays. The total number of letters, cards and packages processed and delivered is estimated to be more than 12 billion.
The Postal Service will expand Sunday delivery, beginning Nov. 28, to locations with high package volumes.
USPS already delivers packages on Sundays in most major cities and expects to deliver more than 9.7 million packages each Sunday throughout the holiday season.
Mail carriers will also deliver packages for an additional fee on Christmas Day in select locations.
The Postal Service plans all year for the peak holiday season. This year’s preparations include leasing 7.5 million square feet of additional space across more than 40 annexes to handle the increase in the number of packages being mailed.
The Postal Service is also currently hiring for more than 40,000 seasonal positions to help process and deliver the mail.
Since April, the Postal Service has installed 97 of 112 new package sorting machines, reflecting the Postmaster General’s “Delivering for America” plan’s $40 billion of planned investment over 10 years.
Additionally, more than 50 machines that can sort large packages are expected to be up and running prior to December. The new machinery gives the Postal Service the capacity to process an additional 4.5 million packages each day.