KENOSHA, Wis. — With Thanksgiving being later in the month this year, many shoppers are feeling pressure as the calendar is already turning to December.
Holiday shoppers were busy on Cyber Monday making millions of purchases on the online deal day.
According to an Adobe report, Americans spent $13.3 billion on Monday. That is up more than 7% from last year’s Cyber Monday. Cyber Monday shoppers also spent roughly $2.5 billion more on Cyber Monday than online shoppers did on Black Friday.
With those record-setting numbers of sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday, retail giant Amazon had one of its busiest day on Tuesday.
The Kenosha Amazon location said Tuesday was a big day to ship out everyone’s Cyber Monday orders.
“This is kind of like the wedding day for us,” Adam Alger, an Amazon senior station manager, said. “We have to get all those packages out. Got to get them out safely, to the right vans and, ultimately, to the customers’ doorstep.”
The Kenosha Amazon location had drivers buzzing in and out throughout the day Tuesday, loading up their trucks and heading out to deliver tens of thousands of packages. Alger said those numbers will only increase during this holiday season.
“Combined, we do over double our normal volume here the last few days,” Alger said. “This particular station normally does over 55,000 packages. We are processing over 110,000 today.”
Alger said these next few weeks are only just the beginning.
“We expect this to continue,” Alger said. “Despite Cyber Monday and Black Friday sales, our actual biggest volume days are the week before Christmas. Which is Dec. 14 to Dec. 21. That is when we see our max volume come out. That week we are expecting to do over 120,000 packages a day.”
The Kenosha Amazon location said it expects to more than double its loads, making it the busiest time of year as shoppers across the state make up for lost time with only a couple of weeks to truly get their orders placed.
It’s also the busiest time of year for local shipping shops. A local Kenosha EZ Pack N Ship said these next few weeks are its peak season for the year.
Owner Tom Oglivie said with the timing of the holidays this year, people have less time to send out their gifts if they want them delivered by Christmas.
“Because of the simple fact that Thanksgiving was late this year and stuff like that, everyone needs to get their packages out earlier than later,” Oglivie said. “The longer that you wait for a package to get out, if you want it to get there before Christmas, the problem you run into is the more that it will cost.”
Olgivie said customers must send their packages with EZ Pack N Ship by Dec. 17 if they want their shipments to be delivered by Christmas, without having to pay extra fees.