Editor in chief at IamExpat Media
With the prospect of only being able to exchange Christmas presents via the post, rather than in person, looking increasingly likely, Deutsche Post is gearing up for an end-of-year boom. It has therefore announced that it will start evening deliveries in the run-up to the national holiday.
The largest postal service in Germany is expecting a record year, with the coronavirus crisis driving a boom in online shopping and forcing more people to exchange gifts via the mail. “For the whole year we expect an increase of almost 15 percent compared to last year, around 1,8 billion parcels in total,” said Deutsche Post board member Tobias Meyer.
The pre-Christmas period is expected to be particularly busy - even more so than usual. “From the end of November to Christmas, we expect three to four very strong weeks, with around eleven million shipments [each day] on peak days, compared to an average of around 5,2 million shipments.”
The postal company will deliver somewhere between 50 and 55 million parcels a week. According to Meyer, the number of letters and parcels delivered daily would, if you laid them end to end, roughly correspond to the length of a freight train from Frankfurt am Main to Düsseldorf. Pretty mind boggling.
In order to safely cope with the large quantities of shipments, Deutsche Post has announced that it will create thousands of new jobs in the coming weeks and extend its delivery times into the evenings. “We will work in several waves throughout the day, so our delivery drivers will ring the doorbell more often in the coming weeks - in the evenings as well,” said Meyer.
Although Deutsche Post is planning to hire 10.000 new employees to cope with the upsurge in deliveries, Meyer does not rule out possible bottlenecks for customers over the Christmas period. “This heavy traffic will certainly be particularly challenging for us because of the restrictions and protective measures necessitated by corona,” he said.
If you want to make sure that your package arrives with its recipient on time by Christmas Eve, make sure to post it by 12 noon on December 19. December 22 is the deadline for letters and postcards.