Boston Mail Facility Processed Estimated 8 Million Letters On Busiest Day
BOSTON (CBS) - Rivaling Santa's workshop, the USPS is racing around the clock to move an enormous amount of mail this holiday season! Boston's processing and distribution center expected this Monday, December 16th to be their peak day leading up to Christmas.
"It's very busy. We operate 365 days a year, 24 hours a day. We have 1500 employees here. Just that one day, December 16th, we will process 8 million letters and about 200,000 packages," explained Myles Donoghue, the facility's senior manager of distribution operations.
When bins of mail enter the facility from mailboxes and local post offices, they first travel up a belt onto a machine that will begin to organize the piles. It can instantly identify where the stamp is on each envelope, and then will quickly arrange the mail all facing in the right direction.
Mail containing magnets, like popular save-the-date cards, are the steel machine's worst nightmare! Employees must also manually remove envelopes containing pens, candy, keys, or anything bulky. The mail needs to be mostly flat so the machine can keep everything moving - 30,000 envelopes an hour!
"We have high speed cameras taking an image of every single piece and reconcile that image, determine its zip code and make sure it's going to the appropriate bin," Donoghue said.
Within a few hours, those bins by zip code will board trucks or planes... then into the hands of couriers, for the swift completion of their appointed rounds. From start to finish, it's a well-oiled machine.
"This is what we gear up to do every single year. We've been doing it for more than 200 years and we do expect to be very successful this holiday season," said Donoghue.
2019 Holiday Shipping Deadlines:
First Class Mail Friday, Dec. 20
Priority Mail Saturday, Dec. 21
Priority Mail Express Monday, Dec. 23
