North Carolina USPS invests in auto mail sorters to ensure holiday packages arrive on time

By Caitlyn Penter

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    GREENVILLE, South Carolina (WLOS) — Making sure your holiday packages arrive on time: USPS officials in Greenville said they’ve invested a lot this year to make sure that happens.

Greenville USPS invests in auto mail sorters to ensure holiday packages arrive on time

Much of Western North Carolina’s mail is sorted at the Greenville Processing and Distribution Center.

Terry Mayers, the executive plant manager for the center, said they’ve invested in better technology.

“It’s really increased the amount of volume that we can flow into our facility for our customers,” he said.

Mayers said over the last year, USPS has invested $40 billion into its facilities across the country.

Locally, that impact is felt as the Greenville facility has switched over from manual to automated mail sorters.

“It’s given us increased capacity; we process an additional 45,000 pieces of parcels per day,” he said.

Before the new machine, the facility processed 270 packages an hour. Now, it’s doing 2,800 to 3,000 per hour.

“I say, be confident that we are prepared for the volume that we receive this year,” said Mayers.

He said they are seeing impacts from supply chain issues.

“We expect as the supply chain loosens up that we will see surges at different points of that volume as it comes to our facility,” he said.

Mayers said those expecting to ship out holiday packages can help by getting their packages out early.

USPS says to make sure their packages make it in time by Christmas Day, people need to mail them by:

Dec. 15 for retail ground service Dec. 17 for first class Dec. 18 for priority Dec. 23 for priority mail express USPS is hiring extra help for the holiday season and will be holding a series of virtual career fairs every Friday up through Nov. 19.

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