Monday busiest shipping day for holidays

CHICAGO (WLS) -- Millions of cards and packages will crisscross the country this holiday season.

Among them, the presents Jing Tong is sending her family and friends in Minnesota.

She wanted to make sure they reached their destination before Christmas, so she headed to the main branch of the Chicago post office Monday, on what is the postal service's busiest shipping day of the year.

"I just think that, OK, it's less than a week before the holidays, so I think I should get this out to my friends," she said.

The post office will process the most packages of the holiday season Monday. And they have an even bigger load compared to last year because of the rise in online shopping, which means this year 12 percent more parcels are being processed.

"It was 608 million nationally, so it is a big jump for us, so from the 608 million to 750 million, that's great," said Joyce Ozia, U.S. Postal Service.

And to handle that increase, the post office has hired 30,000 seasonal workers across the country to process and deliver packages on time.

Like parcels Karen Cain is sending to family and friends near and far.

"This is just when it came together for us. We would have liked to have done it sooner but, yeah, today is that day it's happening," Cain said.

DHL is also seeing its busiest shipping day of the year.

Their Franklin Park facility processed an 89-percent higher package volume Monday to meet the demand. The company started planning for it back in February.

"We have more employees, more trucks, more planes. We're ready for today," said Joe Yates, operations manager, DHL.