Local post offices and UPS stores are knee-deep in Christmas gifts.

THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE, Miss. (WCBI)- The US Postal Service expects over 800 million packages and 13 billion pieces of mail to be delivered this holiday season.

That means local post offices and UPS stores are knee-deep in Christmas gifts.

It’s peak holiday shopping season, and with all those purchases, many people need a way to send them to loved ones. That’s when the rubber hits the road for the US Postal Service, UPS, and FED EX.

“Well, it’s what we call peak season in business terms, typically, November, equals a month and a half of business December equals two months of average business. So it’s a very energetic time of the year we’ve got lots of customers coming in wanting to ship stuff to family, tons of Amazon returns. So it’s a busy, busy season for us,” said David Buchanan.

Employees are staying busy, packing, taping, and shipping.

“Our busiest day was last Monday we had 6000 packages just from the city of Columbus and county and Columbus. We normally have 2000, so we tripled our volume in one day,” Ken Oglesbee.

And Ken Oglesbee says it’s just getting started.

“Next Monday is supposed to be our busiest shipping day,” said Ken Oglesbee.

David Buchanan at the UPS store says it takes a lot of preparation to get ready for the holidays.

“We certainly want to stock up, not only on supplies such as boxes bubble wrap peanuts, you know gift cards, all sorts of office supplies. We also make sure we’re staffed up on personnel. I want to make sure that both of our stores have plenty of trained people so that instead of learning on the job they’re actually performing and being able to help those customers so that we can get them in quickly service them appropriately and get them out with a smile on their face,” said Buchanan.

“We have tripled the volume that we have, so that means we had to have more carriers, more people, delivering, but then it takes a lot of room in our trucks to get those packages and to their destinations,” said Oglesbee.

Some people come in with their packages pre-boxed while others need a helping hand.

“Grandparents are sending the grandkids multiple presents at a time. So yeah, but we try to get them all in one box. That way, it’s not multiple boxes arriving at one time, so it’ll be easier on them and us as well,” said Macie Morris.

Both UPS and The US Postal Service recommend getting your packages shipped by next Friday if you are using ground or first class shipping.

However, Oglesbee recommends getting your packages out by this coming Monday due to the high volume of deliveries.