Shorter Holiday Season Means Bigger Challenges for Shipping Industry

Shipping companies like FedEx and UPS may struggle to keep up with orders during the holiday season this year due to how late in the calendar Thanksgiving fell in 2019, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

The Thanksgiving holiday always takes place on the fourth Thursday of November, but this year that fell on a late date, Nov. 28th, leaving less than a month to Chanukah and the non-Jewish holidays that follow, and fewer days during which to deliver more than an estimated two billions packages.

Amazon, which has been expanding its own delivery network, will also be hard-pressed to deliver on its promise to provide one-day shipping on millions of products on its website.

But carriers are confident that advancements in technology and expanded facilities will enable them to meet the demand successfully. Amazon has the advantage of already possessing the inventory that will be ordered and delivered and they can anticipate demand by moving items ahead of time to where they expect customers to place orders.

The U.S. Postal Service, on the other hand, expects to deliver fewer packages this year due to the smaller amount of time at its disposal, but it is making some moves to handle the greater volume of packages such as expanding Sunday delivery for locations where there are large numbers of deliveries.