Parcel Services Already in High Gear As 'Cyber Monday' Hits
By Mike DeNardo
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Crunch time has already begun for parcel delivery services as they work to get all of those items being bought where they are going.
Melissa Baldwin, of Northeast Philadelphia, did some Cyber Monday shopping today. What did she order?
"Lots of stuff! Perfume packages, gift sets, the iHome speakers for the iPads and iPhones," she says.
And now those gifts join the 585 million other packages that UPS expects to deliver in December.
The UPS hub on Oregon Avenue in South Philadelphia was processing about 100,000 packages on this Cyber Monday -- up from about 60,000 on a typical day.
"We like to call it Cyber Week because it's more than just one day to us," UPS industrial engineering manager Brian McCabe tells KYW Newsradio. "It really begins with the Thanksgiving holiday and carries all the way through to the end of the week."
Remember last year's delivery backlog? McCabe says UPS has hired 95,000 temporary workers, and they delivered packages on Black Friday for the first time ever, to try to keep ahead of the retail crush.
For more information on how to protect yourself while shopping on Cyber Monday, click here.