Photo By PAULA MULLER
Kelly Condon of the Willow Street Post Office in Lynn hands a package to Tatiana Zayas.
By GABE MARTINEZ
Local postal workers logged a banner holiday season with a sharp increase in parcel deliveries, said Postmaster John Meuse.
Local post office workers extended their hours, and worked seven days a week in order to ensure on-time delivery of packages for the holidays.
“Our employees have done a tremendous job,” said Meuse. “In Lynn, we’re pushing about a 40 percent increase in parcel delivery in this year compared to last year.”
Nationally, Greater Boston ranked seventh out of 71 postal districts in terms of volume of parcels delivered. The holiday season launches on Thanksgiving and runs through Christmas Eve. During that period, The Greater Boston district delivered over 10 million parcels.
“In Lynn we did about 190,000 parcels which is way up from last year,” said Meuse.
On an average day, The Lynn post office has about 2,500 parcels, during the Holiday season, they average between 4,000 and 5,000.
The increased popularity of online shopping has not decreased the number of deliveries for the post office. In addition to parcels mailed directly to one of its branches, postal workers also delivered packages for Amazon, and often deliver for UPS and Federal Express as well.
Inside the post office, there has been an increase in customer traffic noticed by employees.
“There’s been a slight increase in foot traffic at the windows,” said Janet McElligott, clerk supervisor. “But, our parcel numbers have been way up.”
According to the post office’s website, the busiest mailing day of the year was Monday, Dec. 14. That day, the US Postal Service accepted and processed over 612 million parcels, a seven percent increase from 2014.
The busiest delivery day, is Dec. 21. This year, the post office delivered over 30 million parcels.
“We deliver 365 days a year,” McElligott said. “Not many companies can say that.”
