FedEx predicted that they’ll process 317 million packages this holiday season between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, and now UPS has made their own prediction public: they anticipate processing at least 630 million packages this year, an increase of 10% over last year. There are two problems with that figure: UPS has been really bad at predicting package volume the last two years, and more of those items are being shipped to residential addresses.

What’s wrong with delivering to residential addresses? A lot, if you’re a delivery company: businesses tend to receive multiple packages at the same time, and multiple tenants in an office park, building, or shopping center means one stop for multiple packages. It’s hard for residential addresses to match that level of efficiency, even for apartment buildings in the most dense urban areas.

To help with that problem, they’ll be encouraging customers to sign up for the UPS My Choice program, which lets them pay to choose a delivery window, redirect a shipment to where they’ll actually be, or have a critical package sent to a nearby UPS Store or other retailer. As frustrating as “Sorry we missed you!” notices are for customers, they’re even more frustrating for UPS drivers, who have to make multiple trips to the same house. It doesn’t hurt that they collect money on the more advanced MyChoice features and for redirecting packages.

The change to shipping by dimensional weight, which charges shippers for the space that a package takes up in a plane or truck in addition to its weight, should also help UPS with their whole money-making endeavor.

Online shopping to drive record holiday shipments for UPS [Atlanta Journal-Constitution]

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