Waiting on Christmas deliveries. Should Georgians still worry about USPS delays?

Caption

A pair of U.S. Postal Service delivery vehicles.

Credit: Nati Harnik / AP

Christmas is less than a week away, and many are waiting for packages to be delivered. Will they arrive on time?

The timing is critical, as the U.S. Postal Service has faced widely reported delays and service failures in Georgia throughout 2024

Chris Gaffney, Managing Director of the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute at Georgia Tech answered if consumers should still be concerned about USPS problems in Georgia.

He spoke with GPB's Orlando Montoya about holiday package delivery.

TRANSCRIPT:

Orlando Montoya: This is All Things Considered on GPB. I'm Orlando Montoya. We're a week out from Christmas, and many of you might have packages out for delivery right now. Will they arrive on time? Especially with widely reported US Postal Service delays and service failures in Georgia in 2024, we invited Chris Gaffney, Managing Director of the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute at Georgia Tech, to talk about holiday package delivery. He spoke with me yesterday. I asked him if consumers still should be concerned about USPS problems in Georgia.

Chris Gaffney: This is a season where I think the consumer is still going to experience some level of disappointment relative to what they see in the rest of the year. The majority of the facilities that USPS has are not fully automated yet, so they're still dependent on people. This time of year, demand is typically up 30 to 50% over what you would normally have and the performance is about 50% worse than it would normally be. On an average time of the year, 5% of shipments don't get where they're supposed to be on time and this year it's 50% more than that. I think we're going to see about the same level of experience as prior years. I have my own anecdotes for friends and family. Overall, ecom volume for home delivery is up 5% this year and you try to surge. This is a five or six week surge period. So there are going to be facilities that struggle. I haven't heard huge issues locally this year like we did last year. 

Orlando Montoya: You mentioned anecdotes and this interview will air on Thursday. Is that too late to get shipments on time for the following Thursday? 

Chris Gaffney: I think for the majority of companies you buy from, free shipping by Christmas is probably no longer an option. I think you're going to need to look for an expedited option. In all honesty, I would like folks to make sure they're getting either Amazon or UPS to do that delivery to have the best shot of getting there by Christmas. 

Orlando Montoya: Let's talk about Amazon and UPS. We're hearing reports, people in our own newsroom seeing that they're getting packages delivered to their homes by people that are not identified as Amazon or UPS, they're just showing up in regular cars, not uniformed Amazon or ups. Is this something that these big shippers do around the holidays, typically to help with the surge? 

Chris Gaffney: They all use it in some respects during the year with companies like Roadie as well as Uber and Lyft, but it is all hands on deck these last couple of weeks. My own Uber driver told me they had the option of delivering packages to your and my home in this last week and I think this is another effort by all the providers to use whatever resources are available to handle this unprecedented surge that we get in this final week that might be 70% greater volume than we would see during a normal week in the year. 

Orlando Montoya: How often do shipments get lost or delayed? 

Chris Gaffney: You know what we would say is most cases the packages aren't lost i mean literally the packages that never make it are less than one percent and that incremental delay is one to three days and most of the year you're not going to sweat it if something's one to 3 days late but this time of year one to three days really matters and i think what we would say is there's science involved in setting those promise dates but the science is mostly assuming what goes on normally, it is not factoring in. These peak challenges that may occur in a hub location. So that's probably the only other point that I think is upsetting my family members. This was supposed to come on Thursday, and it's not here, and it either, it's no clear when it's showing up. That's where people are uncomfortable that I'm not gonna be able to get my cousins or my nephews' gift to them on time. 

Orlando Montoya: That's Chris Gaffney, Managing Director of the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute at Georgia Tech. Thanks for speaking with me. 

Chris Gaffney: All right, thanks so much and happy holidays.