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Online Shopping Creates Surge of Holiday Shipping

LACEYVILLE — Christmas is creeping up, which means time to start buying presents for those loved ones. This time of the year is the busiest for postal wor...

LACEYVILLE -- Christmas is creeping up, which means time to start buying presents for those loved ones.

This time of the year is the busiest for postal workers, and with more people shopping online now more than ever, that burden on the post office is even greater.

Now that Veterans Days is over, workers at post offices know that from now until Christmas, it's almost nonstop helping deliver all those packages. And that's a big burden in small post offices all across our area.

The day after Veterans Day is the warm up for postal workers, like Jane Murray of Laceyville, with two days' worth of mail filling her truck. Murray knows it's not going to get any easier until after Christmas.

"Sometimes I feel like I'm doing a jigsaw puzzle because trying to fit all the packages in my truck to go out onto the route can be challenging," said Murray.

In case you were wondering, her personal record is 160 packages inside her ford SUV without having to come back and reload.

"I probably do 80 percent shopping online," said Al Rosencrance.

But now, with more and more people buying online, the people at the Laceyville post office are prepared to see as much as 15 percent more packages this holiday season than last. It's a number they don't see going down, especially when you mention the forbidden phrase, "free shipping."

"It's a curse word," said Laceyville postmaster Bill Clark. "But it's great for the customers. And why leave your house when you can hit submit or click and ship or whatever it takes and it comes in two days?"

It's not all bad for postal workers though. They believe over the past few years, as they've seen an increase in online shopping, they've seen a decrease in things like magazines and catalogs.

"The fact that there's not as many magazines is a godsend for the packages because it allows me more space to put packages in," said Murray.

But at the end of the day, you shouldn't have to worry on whether your gifts make it. You just might have to worry about how your mail carrier holds up.

"You can either go crazy or you can just challenge yourself to see how much you can get done in the allotted amount of time," Murray added.

For those of you wondering, the USPS believes December 14 will be the busiest day to ship your packages and December 21 will be the toughest day for them to deliver packages.

There's plenty of time until then, but it creeps up quite quickly.

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