LANCASTER, N.Y. (WKBW) — More than 300,000 packages a day pass through the 600,000 square foot Amazon Distribution Center in Lancaster, and that means extra hands on deck are needed to help sort holiday orders.
“Everyone is ordering for Christmas,” said Benji Croom, an operations manager at the facility.
For many, these presents will be wrapped and placed under the tree for happy families in Western New York, but they have to be sorted first, and distributed to either Amazon delivery drivers or the post office.
“We have to sort it by hand,” Croom said. “It depends on where you live, whether we service that area or not, and that determines where it goes.”
He says all the packages currently in the warehouse right now will be on trucks for delivery tomorrow.
How to get an item before Christmas
There are several options to still get a gift in time for Christmas.
The U.S. Postal Service cut off for Priority Mail Express Next Day shipping is Friday. You can also shop at a lot of online local boutiques that offer local pickup.
Weather Delays
The biggest factor that could impact your packages arriving on time this week is the winter storm with its eye on Western New York.
Croom says extra manpower has been brought in to try to get some packages out early ahead of the storm.
“Looking out and seeing that the weather was coming in, we took and today and tomorrow we raised what our volume was going to be. We know there is going to be impacts. We don’t know the extent of it yet,” he said.
Of course especially this week, porch pirates can hit and take your packages when you’re not looking.
Nearly 1 in 5 Americans are victims of porch piracy. According to a study by security.org, 19% of American adults or 49 million customers had at least one delivery stolen in the last year.
Amazon is rolling out a new feature to combat this problem called garage delivery. With this, a customer hooks their garage door opener to their Amazon Prime account, and the driver leaves the package in the secure garage.
