Businesses, Consumers Counting on UPS Logistics this Holiday Season

UPS (NYSE UPS) employees are as busy as Santa's elves as they prepare to deliver logistics and packages to and from businesses and consumers this holiday season.

From Thanksgiving to Christmas, UPS expects to deliver approximately 430 million packages around the world. And on the busiest day of the year for UPS - Wednesday, Dec. 22 - the company anticipates delivering 24 million packages worldwide, a nearly 60 percent increase over UPS's normal daily delivery volume of 15.1 million packages and documents.

To handle this surge in volume, the company plans to hire roughly 50,000 seasonal workers.

UPS is at the heart of holiday logistics for millions of businesses and consumers. In fact, more holiday packages are shipped with UPS than any other company in the world, said Alan Gershenhorn, UPS senior vice president of worldwide sales and marketing. With movements to and from warehouses to boats, planes, trains and delivery vehicles and then to customers' doorsteps around the world, UPS's global logistics capabilities really deliver the holidays.

The reliable and unmatched UPS global logistics and delivery network enables on-time delivery of holiday packages to restock store shelves or deliver directly to customers' homes. UPS also takes out the guesswork of package delivery by providing shippers and receivers full visibility of their packages. Once packages are in the UPS network, customers can visit UPS.com to track their packages. In fact, UPS expects more than 44 million online package tracking requests on Dec. 22, the busiest tracking day of the season.

Most UPS ground packages reach their destinations in three business days or less. Last-minute shoppers and shippers can rely on UPS air services to ship as late as Thursday, Dec. 23, for delivery on Friday, Dec. 24. To ensure on-time delivery during the holiday rush, UPS Airlines will fly more than 350 additional flights per day during Peak Week, the five days leading up to Saturday, Dec. 25.

Like the resourceful elves at the North Pole, UPS offers a variety of methods to help manage holiday shipping logistics:

Let Us Do The Packing. Shipping holiday packages is fast and convenient when customers enlist the specially trained and certified packing professionals at the nearly 4,800 The UPS Store and Mail Boxes Etc. locations in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. And participating The UPS Store locations offer the Pack & Ship Promise where, if a participating location packs a customer's item, ships it via UPS and the item is damaged or lost in transit, the customer will be reimbursed for the item's value (subject to the lesser of actual value, replacement or repair cost), the cost of packaging materials and service plus the shipping fee. Visit theupsstore.com for more details on the Pack & Ship Promise or to find your neighborhood location.
Do It Yourself. UPS Internet Shipping enables do-it-yourselfers to choose service preferences, pay by credit card, print shipping labels and track packages. With a printed label affixed, a package can be picked up by a UPS driver, placed in one of 40,000 UPS drop boxes or dropped off at a UPS Customer Center, The UPS Store, Mail Boxes Etc. or other authorized shipping outlets. Shippers can visit UPS.com to verify the time-in-transit for each shipping destination.

For those on the go, UPS Mobile (m.ups.com) offers a suite of free mobile shipping applications compatible with the most widely used mobile platforms, online browsers, and devices, including the Apple iPhone, BlackBerry and Android. The free apps not only allow users to ship and track but also to locate the nearest UPS location using the phones' built-in GPS.

For more information on the holiday shipping calendar, green packing and shipping tips and to watch videos about the holiday surge, visit these online venues:

The UPS holiday season media resource site - pressroom.ups.com/holiday

YouTube - youtube.com/ups

Twitter - @UPS_News

Facebook - facebook.com/ups

About UPS

UPS (NYSE:UPS) is a global leader in logistics, offering a broad range of solutions including the transportation of packages and freight; the facilitation of international trade, and the deployment of advanced technology to more efficiently manage the world of business. Headquartered in Atlanta, UPS serves more than 220 countries and territories worldwide. The company can be found on the Web at UPS.com and its corporate blog can be found at blog.ups.com. To get UPS news direct, visit pressroom.ups.com/RSS.