The GOOD news is, we all have one more good shot at getting your items shipped by Christmas for free. That's because "Free Shipping Day" is December 16th, this coming Friday. More than 2,000 merchants will offer free shipping with delivery by Christmas Eve.
Meantime, we got a look at what's happening at Fedex and UPS this morning. As you can probably imagine, they were busy gearing up for the holiday rush.
"This is our busiest day of the year," said Tim Norton of FedEx. "The online shippers are heavy and a lot of the retail is coming in to make sure it's in the stores by Christmas."
"It'll be a record day for FedEx," Norton added. "Seventeen-million packages which is up about 10% from last year."
UPS's officials say their busiest day will be Thursday, December 22nd, when the company will process 300 packages per second! So when do you need to send your packages to make sure they get there in time for Christmas?
If you're willing to pay big for overnight and Saturday service, procrastinators can wait as long as December 23rd. "But if you really want to make sure it's there using ground - you should probably have it in the system as early as possible," says Tom Farrell of UPS. "Next week, Monday, at the latest."
That's the deadline for ground service for UPS. The last day to ship FedEx ground is this Friday, December 16th. If you're using the United States Postal Service, the deadline for parcel post is this Thursday, December 15th.
The deadline for First Class Mail is Tuesday, December 20th.
"Yeah, it's early for me because I still have a lot of stuff that needs to go out," says Robin Kirkland-Gonzales of Northeast Philadelphia.
So when it comes to shipping, you'd better hurry and it helps to be an early riser. Folks we talked to say the earlier in the day, the better.
"There aren't many people here," said James Hunter of South Philadelphia, "but if you come later on in the evening, it is really packed in here. Really packed."
