Postmaster General Louis DeJoy said that the United States Postal Service was going to add 45 extra facilities to handle more packages ahead of the holiday season, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
The extra facilities, which will be used primarily for additional shipping volume and package overflow, is a part of a larger effort by the delivery service to avoid delays that occurred last year during the holiday season.
“We’re going to kill it,” DeJoy told the newspaper.
Other initiatives that the Postal Service is taking include adding 40,000 seasonal workers and more than 100 package sorting machines.
DeJoy told the Journal that a package volume forecast was crafted in February, giving officials enough time to use it as a road map later in the year. He said that in comparison, last year that forecast was delayed as late as October.
The postmaster general added that with the new preparations in place, the Postal Service would be able to handle 50.1 million packages in the peak part of the season — a figure that is up 35 percent from last year, according to the Journal.
The United States is grappling with a supply chain issue and labor shortages that have made Americans anxious about whether they will be able to buy certain goods in the coming months and if those goods will be delivered on time.
The White House announced last week that Walmart, UPS and FedEx in addition to the Port of Los Angeles would be working around the clock to alleviate bottlenecks. The bottlenecks are a result of increased demand stemming from federal aid and coronavirus vaccines, and labor shortages including in industries like trucking and some port closures, among other factors.
–Updated on Oct. 24 at 5:45 a.m.