Carriers run off their feet during Canada Post’s busiest day of the year

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This article was published 14/12/2015 (3904 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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The sign at Canada Post’s southwest depot read “busiest mail day of the year” Monday and it was easy to see why.

Boxes of all sizes, some wrapped, others with logos bearing familiar names — Amazon, Bath & Body Works, Chapters-Indigo — filled the cramped aisles at Winnipeg’s largest Canada Post depot.

Online shopping has soared in recent years, and that’s meant a rise in the number of presents sorted and loaded onto delivery trucks that service 117 routes in south Winnipeg.

“It’s exciting. It’s just long enough after Black Friday and Cyber Monday, where all those deals are happening,” said Ryan Pearson, a letter carrier for Canada Post. “Things are starting to come through the mail stream and they’re ready to go out now. The volumes are really high. There’s a lot of packets, a lot of parcels and a lot of Christmas cards in the mail.”

Pearson was sorting mail in a cramped cubicle-like station. In front of him was a wall of slots into which letters and small packages were sent to numbered baskets, each representing the route the mail will take to its final destination.

Larger packages were loaded onto carts, which were moved into line with other loaded wagons — a mail delivery rush hour of sorts — waiting to be added to the steady stream of trucks continuously leaving the depot.

Since Cyber Monday, Canada Post said it has delivered more than one million packages a day.

“There’s mail everywhere,” said Sheila Poot, delivery manager at the depot on Wilkes Avenue. “It’s parcel crazy here and it’s buzzing.”

Clad in red and wearing a set of antlers, Poot was working to make sure morale was high.

“You have to provide support for people,” she said as Christmas tunes played in the background. “It’s difficult and it’s stressful, but as long as you’re positive and we remove the barriers to make their job a little easier at this time in whatever way we can, it really helps a lot.”

Packing-clerk duo Ruth Jongstra and Kerry Trager — former letter carriers — arrived at work Monday at 4 a.m.

“It’s fun,” Jongstra said. “We work well together.”

“It’s busy and tiring, we don’t sit down much but you get used to it. We just go home and crash later,” Trager said.

Part of the focus on support is extra workers. The depot employs 213 people and they’ve brought in roughly 30 more to help out with the busy stretch.

“Manitobans love a bargain, we like a deal and we will shop for a deal,” Poot said. “E-commerce is huge. (Canada Post) has seen a 20 to 25 per cent increase (in parcel mail). In Winnipeg, we’ve seen a 30 to 35 per cent increase.”

In order to keep up with the high volumes, Canada Post will deliver on Sundays until the holiday season ends.

“We used to be a letter-delivery company that delivers some parcels and now we’re becoming a parcel-delivery company that delivers some letters,” said Eugene Knapik media relations manager at Canada Post. “The amount of letters have fallen off, but the parcel volume have gone up.

“It used to be a Christmas thing. We’d usually see volumes escalate leading up to Christmas. But now it escalates earlier because of this Cyber Monday, Black Friday phenomenon.”

Meanwhile, 260,000 volunteer hours are being put into Canada Post’s most famous Christmas program.

Santa’s Post Office has called upon the services of hundreds of volunteers in the 34th year of the employee-driven program to make sure requests to the jolly man get to the North Pole.

In 2014, Santa answered more than 1.5 million letters in 30 languages. Letters marked with the H0H 0H0 postal code are rushed to the North Pole. Children have until Dec. 16 to get letters in, ensuring they will be delivered and responded to in time.

scott.billeck@freepress.mb.ca