Video: Holiday Shipping Frenzy

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COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI)-Christmas is almost here. That means time is running out if you haven’t mailed out your holiday gifts.

Senior Manager of Fed Ex Ground, Bruce Johnson and his co-workers will get swamped with plenty of packages between now and Christmas.

“When they get done with their delivery day they bring the pick-ups back to the station, we actually unload them and route them to 3 trailers. They go to the Memphis, Olive Branch, Jackson and Birmingham,” says Johnson.

During the holiday season, the volume of shipments reaches its peak. They see between 3,200 and 3,500 shipments a day.

“We had about a 10% increase over last years volume,” says Johnson.

Down on Highway 45, Jason Clark and employees at UPS are seeing a similar volume of holiday traffic.

“We’re open 58 hours a week already,” says Clark.

Jason tells us when you bring items in, it’s best to leave them open.

“We’ll pack them up and get them processed. Try to eliminate the brown paper that you see. Everyone wants to wrap their packages in them. That’s actually something we don’t like because it comes off and your labels are gone and your package gets lost,” says Clark.

As for Bruce and his team, proper packaging is the key.

“Make sure the address is accurate on the package. Second, use a quality package and make sure it’s in a good container that can actually make it from point A to point B.

The last day for shipping items out at both Fed Ex and UPS is Saturday. But each day you wait, the more expensive it becomes. So get it done quickly.