SASKATOON – Just three more sleeps before Christmas. As Santa gets his sleigh ready and the elves work away preparing for the big day, local letter carriers are working at a frenzied pace delivering everyone’s holiday mail.
In early November, the forecast by Canada Post was that the last two months of 2015 would be the busiest in history. And, at the feverish rate letter carriers can be seen scurrying from household to household, street to street in Saskatoon while delivering festive mail, Canada Post might not be too far off.
READ MORE: Busiest week of the year for Canada Post in Edmonton
“There’s lots of Christmas mail, parcels … it’s a bit on the stressful side, fun yes, but the weather’s been great so that helps out tons,” said long-time letter carrier Diane Just, who has been delivering for the last 26 years.
“When the weather’s like this, it’s awesome.”
Other letter carriers agreed. Mild weather conditions make the job a little merrier especially during a time of year when some days can grow a little long based on the volume of mail they need to deliver that day.
“Our fingers aren’t freezing off, our faces aren’t freezing,” laughed Janelle Meier
“It’s way nicer, we really appreciate the nice weather.”
If it’s not the nice weather helping them stay warm, postal workers say it’s something else.
“It’s nice seeing all the kids, their faces light up when their parcels come even though they’re not suppose to,” said Tyler Sieffert.
Some carriers walk six hours a shift or about 18 kilometres a route while delivering mail in Saskatoon. Extrapolated across the country, it’s estimated each work day employees travel some 1.5 million kilometres delivering to 15.7 million addresses. That’s the distance to the moon and back, twice.
“We’ve been going strong since November, mid-November so it is tiring so it’s kinda like a marathon to the end here but it’s good though,” said Just.
“People are really festive and really appreciate that delivery, it’s good to bring a smile.”
More than 2,000 seasonal workers were hired to help the 49,000 delivery and processing employees at Canada Post. Full-time letter carriers have even put in long hours over weekends to make sure parcels arrive in time.
Dec. 14 was projected to be the busiest day of the year with an anticipated 3,400 parcels dropped off every minute to go under the tree.
So how many parcels will be delivered this Christmas? Canada Post predicts a record amount, 43 million parcels up 20 per cent from last November and December.
“I normally get one to 20 large parcels a day on my route throughout the year but this December I’ve had 60 to 80 parcels a day and that’s just the big parcels, not even our little packets so it’s way heavier than normal,” said Meier.
It’s work these letter carriers say they don’t mind one bit and staying in shape means they can afford to have a few more Christmas goodies come Friday.
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