They definitely had some capacity issues near the end. On Christmas Eve I saw a UPS driver in a U-Haul truck in my neighborhood then later saw a U-Haul truck pulled up back to back with a UPS truck and they were handing off packages in a strip mall parking lot. Personally, though, I was rather impressed by the shipping carriers this year (UPS included). No late packages and I even got some delivered early. The volume has to have skyrocketed in the last 5 years so there is obviously going to be growing pains but shipping just gets better and better every year for me so I'm a happy customer.
> They definitely had some capacity issues near the end. On Christmas Eve I saw a UPS driver in a U-Haul truck in my neighborhood then later saw a U-Haul truck pulled up back to back with a UPS truck and they were handing off packages in a strip mall parking lot.
UPS always hires seasonal workers for the December rush. And since the workers are seasonal, the delivery vehicles also have to be seasonal. They can't afford to buy trucks that are parked for 11 out of 12 months. Lucky for them, fewer people move houses during the holiday season, so they can borrow U-Haul's spare capacity.
Even UPS's regular trucks have a driver and a helper during December. For the other 11 months of the year, the trucks only have one employee in them.
You may also have noticed the postal service doing multiple deliveries on the same day. It's easier to overlay the abnormal package volume on top of the regular mail delivery, rather than to split the mail routes.
The holiday rush has always been crazy like this. Nothing new in the Internet era except for additional volume.
