Home page

Text size

E-mail this page

SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Downtown shoppers stopping by the Canada Post main office over the past few weeks would have seen the effects of record delivery numbers for the national postal service.

Canada Post announced that it broke an all-time delivery record for a single day on Dec. 13. On that day, one million parcels were delivered by Canada Post within Canada, beating the previous record by 11 per cent.

In the last week before Christmas Day, Canada Post expected to deliver 4.4 million parcels to 15.1 million addresses.

While Canada Post was unable to provide statistics specific to the North, local couriers and shipping agencies say they have been seeing a standard Christmas push on parcels.

"It started probably (in the second week of December) and will go right through until Sunday," said Ron Kingsley, manager of Northwest Territories operations for Buffalo Air Express, last Monday.

Kingsley estimated shipping traffic has increased about 30 per cent over regular numbers during the holiday season with packages en route to Yellowknife coming from across Canada and worldwide

Canadian North also saw an increased number of shipments in preparation for the Christmas Season, stated Lisa Hicks, marketing manager for the airline, in an e-mail to Yellowknifer.

"The majority of the increase comes from carrying Canada Post mail and courier shipments," Hicks added.

"As Edmonton is our southern gateway for the Western Arctic, most of the shipments do come from there, but we also receive them from across Canada."

What also increases during the holiday season is the number of customers who ship items under Canadian North's guaranteed service, which ensures the packages are delivered by a certain time.

Those shipped a little late and not under guaranteed service, are expected to keep Canadian North deliveries busy into the new year.

Internationally, UPS was expecting its busiest day last Thursday with 28 million packages scheduled to move worldwide, which equates to about 300 packages every second and an 80 per cent increase over an average day.

"We are expecting a 9.8 per cent increase over last year," said Steve Vitale, communications manager for UPS Inc. "A lot of that is obviously driven by online activity now more than ever."

Northern statistics for UPS deliveries were not available.

We welcome your opinions. Click here to e-mail a letter to the editor.