USPS ‘gridlocked’ as historic crush of holiday packages sparks delays
By Hannah Denham and Jacob Bogage
A historic crush of e-commerce packages is threatening to overwhelm U.S. Postal Service operations just weeks before Christmas and Senate runoff elections in Georgia, according to agency employees and postal industry tracking firms.
As Americans increasingly shop online because of the coronavirus pandemic, private express carriers FedEx and UPS have cut off delivery service for some retailers, sending massive volumes of packages to the Postal Service.
That has led to widespread delays and pushed the nation’s mail agency to the brink. Postal employees are reporting mail and package backlogs across the country, and working vast amounts of overtime hours that have depleted morale during another surge of coronavirus infections nationwide.
“We’re really gridlocked all over the place,” said a Postal Service transportation manager in Ohio, who like others in this report spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution. “It’s bad. I’ve never seen it like this before.”
