MILAN, Ill. (KWQC) – Postal carriers are preparing for their busiest season! Nearly 13 billion pieces of mail are expected to be processed and delivered between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day. Over the past five years, the USPS has seen the number of packages increase by more than 2 billion – from 4 billion to 6.1 billion. The Postal Service has nearly 229,000 vehicles, each carrier taking about 100-200 pieces of mail each day.

Behind the scenes, there’s a warehouse full of various machines preparing mail for the carriers. On December 4, the Milan location saw over 2 million pieces of mail go through their location!

The United States Postal Service took TV6’s Montse Ricossa for a tour at their Milan location, showing her behind closed doors and see what goes on during their busy season. “When it’s a normal day and you times it by 10, that’s our peak season every year,” said Bob Dodds, the General Manager.

One of the machines scans each address and prepares it for the carrier. Dodds said, “they run at about 30-32,000 pieces an hour. It will be accurate. More accurate than the carrier themselves. This will run until about 4:30 this morning.”