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Super Bowl Of Delivery: Holiday Season Brings Big Business To FedEx

HALETHORPE, Md. (WJZ)—Shipping companies expect record-breaking business this holiday season.

One of the biggest, FedEx, invited Mike Schuh to come out and take a look at its operations in Baltimore County.

More than 600 FedEx planes are arriving full and leaving full. The same is true of the fleet of 90,000 on the ground.

It's all because more and more, Santa seems to drive a white or brown truck.

"For FedEx, this is our Super Bowl. We prepare for this all year long," said Parul Bajaj, FedEx.

In Halethorpe, WJZ got a glimpse at an early beginning to a day when 22 million packages will flow through the system. That's an 11 percent jump this year.

"We're seeing this increase year after year due to e-commerce, seeing more people are shopping online, so we're moving more packages through our belts," Bajaj said.

Rico Melton loads his truck and knows the drill.

"Basically, it's going to be like this until after Christmas," Melton said.

Even after Christmas, there's a spike of returns going the other way.

Worldwide, it takes more than 300,000 people to make this day go smoothly.

And while the weather in Baltimore means this should be a smooth day, elsewhere the company says it's ready should the conditions in the North Pole drift south.

FedEx says the next big day for them is next Monday when all the cyber week orders filter through, and then it's the Monday after that when all the last-minute orders come through.

FedEx says the deadline for ground package delivery so it will make it to its destination by Dec. 25 is Dec. 17.

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