Although Grant Zehnder, a 23-year-old Chicago resident, finished shopping early, he issued an IOU for last Christmas only two weeks after his package arrived.

As Covid-19 forces more consumers to shop online, leaving logistics companies unprepared to cope with the surge in numbers, Zehnder is one of millions of Americans waiting for holiday shopping.

This year, they seem to face greater challenges. Package analysis company ShipMatrix predicts that 89.8 million packages will be delivered every day in the United States. Peak season Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, there will be 79.1 million in 2020 and 65.3 million in 2019.

However, delayed shipments have fallen by nearly half, from approximately 2.5 million packages per day in the 2020 holiday season to approximately 1.3 million packages so far this year.

According to industry insiders, the reason is that last year’s delays forced companies and consumers to rethink how they deal with the shopping season.

Stephen Brad, senior vice president of operations at the e-commerce supply chain company Project Verte, said logistics companies, retailers and operators all misunderstood the full impact of Covid-19 on the retail industry until it was too late last year.

Brad said that after that experience, most operators invested more money to strengthen their systems and networks. This has already paid off for this holiday.

President Joe Biden touted these improvements on Wednesday. “FedEx, UPS and the U.S. Postal Service have delivered faster delivery times this season than before the pandemic, even if Americans bought record quantities of goods,” he said. Say.

UPS stated that it started preparing for the peak holiday season at the beginning of the year, and cooperated with customers to initiate holiday promotions in advance to deliver packages to its network earlier than in previous holidays. It added more facilities and eased the recruitment process for approximately 100,000 seasonal and other holiday workers.

Matt Lavery, the director of human resources at UPS, said that in order to ensure that it has enough package handlers and driver assistants, “we canceled the process steps that we thought were unnecessary for us or did not meet regulatory requirements. .”

Lavery said that the hiring process, which previously took about 21 to 28 days, was reduced to about 10 to 12 days, and new employees got the job in less than an hour after the interview. “When we are within 30 minutes [the job interview], We have collected all the information we need” and the new employees are ready for training, he added.

Early shopping guidance to consumers played a role in facilitating this year’s delivery. According to an internal survey by UPS, 95% of consumers shop earlier than usual during the Christmas holiday.

According to ShipMatrix data, FedEx delivered 97.1% of express parcels on time between December 5 and December 11, compared with 99.3% for UPS and 98.5% for U.S. Postal Service. The company announced last week that its revenue for the second quarter was US$23.5 billion, a year-on-year increase of 14.1%.

Raj Subramaniam, chief operating officer of FedEx, told analysts that its ground delivery business had witnessed an “excellent network week,” delivering 100 million packages. He said that its ability to handle this amount is due to the addition of more capacity throughout the network, including sorting facilities equivalent to 300 American football fields since June.

He added that since September, FedEx has successfully hired 60,000 front-line workers. However, this comes at a price, as the company provides higher wages, more paid leave and tuition reimbursements to overcome the “staffing and retention challenges caused by the restricted labor market.”

In the most recent quarter, the impact of labor shortages increased the cost of FedEx Ground by $285 million.

The US Postal Service said it expects to process between 850 million and 950 million packages this holiday season. Its average delivery time slightly increased from 2.9 days in the peak season last year to 2.7 days this year.

Since April this year, USPS stated that it installed 92 new parcel sorters, leased an additional 13 million square feet, and hired more than 40,000 seasonal positions to make its network more resilient.

Logistics companies and carriers have also turned to technology and data tools this year to solve the last-mile delivery problem. Steve Denton, CEO of Ware2Go, a company backed by UPS, said that these technical tools are used to predict demand, allow carriers to place the correct inventory closer to customers, and through the deployment of more automation and Robotics to offset labor shortages.

Of course, the customer himself did his part. As a result of last year’s experience, Zehnder said he shopped in the store and completed online shopping early to avoid “fewer gifts under the Christmas tree and less festive atmosphere on Christmas morning”.