A steady stream of customers at the Montclair Post Office in Denver trudged across the snow-packed parking lot Monday morning, many of them juggling wrapped packages as the busiest day of the shipping year unfolded for mailers and those waiting in lines.
Millions of boxes, packages, envelopes, letters and cards zipped across the country, and beyond, as senders hoped their gifts would land beneath Christmas trees in time for Santa to grab the credit.
Nationwide, the U.S. Post Office expected to handle 750 million pieces of mail Monday, with Colorado postal workers handling 700,000 packages and 5 million holiday cards and letters.
“It’s the busiest day of the year,” said Marcela Juarez-Rivera, a post office spokeswoman.
At the Montclair station, 8275 E. 11th Ave., Mary Anne Sine, a teacher at nearby Bishop Machebeuf Catholic High School, saved precious time by using an Automated Postal Center instead of waiting for a clerk.
Sine shipped three holiday boxes — to Virginia, Florida and Michigan — and bought postage stamps from the APC, which had a line about five deep.
“It’s wonderful,” Sine gushed of the automated aide.
It was better than Steve Ridley’s fate. He stood in line with 20 other customers.
Ridley, who was shipping two boxes to family in Southern California, said he was also mailing cards internationally and needed a clerk’s assistance to tab the costs of sending the cards.
“I’ll stand and practice my deep breaths,” he said as he slipped into the line, which stretched out a door and down a hall.
Others with packages walked into the station, viewed the line and fled.
“I’ll be back tomorrow at 8 o’clock,” one man announced to no one in particular.
About 45 blocks north of the Montclair station, postal employees at the Denver Bulk Mail Center were handling about 300,000 holiday packages. The bulk center, the post office’s largest sorting facility in the state, typically moves about 180,000 parcels daily, said postal spokeswoman Juarez-Rivera.
The center was buzzing with electric-powered fork lifts unloading and loading trucks as parcels were sorted by a long conveyor belt. Digital scanners read bar codes as packages whizzed by, assigning hopper destinations where the parcels where automatically dumped to be picked-up and shipped-on.
The deadlines to ship a package out-of-state and get it to its destination within the continental United States by Dec. 25 using regular mail is this Saturday. The deadline for in-state mail for pre-Christmas delivery is next Monday. Express mail will be available to major U.S. cities until Dec. 23.
Kieran Nicholson: 303-954-1822 or knicholson@denverpost.com
