HOLIDAY PACKAGES Innovations aid shipping surge

An increase in online shopping fuels rising demand on shipping companies.
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- It takes a team of meteorologists, a heavy dose of computation -- how many steps must be climbed, how fast can a lawn be traversed -- and the steady beeping of bar-code scanners to get all those holiday packages shipped and under the Christmas tree.
Delivery companies are bracing for the busiest shipping days of the year next week, and the shipping industry has been developing new tools to make sure everything gets where it is going on time.
"It's turned us as much into a technology company as a shipping company," said Steve Holmes, a spokesman for United Parcel Service Inc. "The information that travels with the package has become as important as the package itself."
UPS, which expects its busiest day to be Tuesday, said it receives more than 16 million package tracking requests during the busiest days of the holiday season. FedEx Corp. said it gets an average of 3.5 million requests daily. It had its peak delivery day Monday.
High-tech changes
The tracking system is one of the most visible ways that delivery companies have transformed themselves in recent years into increasingly high-tech businesses, a response to the booming online retail sector and ever-more-demanding customers.
"It's changed our business model here," said John Dunavant, manager of global operations control for FedEx.
Six years ago, delivery companies were scrambling -- often futilely -- to fill the surge of holiday orders from the then-budding world of Internet shopping. Customer outrage over packages that arrived late that year has pushed them to improve their operations.
That gave rise to features like the customer tracking system.