FedEx Corp. forecasters expect FedEx will move approximately 17 million shipments -- almost double its daily average volume -- through its global networks today.


To handle the surge on what the company projects will be the busiest day in a nearly 40-year history, FedEx has added 20,000 seasonal positions at FedEx Ground, FedEx Home Delivery and FedEx SmartPost and is offering additional shifts to current team members working at facilities around the country.

"There's an extraordinary amount of technology and precision that is in place at FedEx to ensure packages get to their destinations before Christmas," said John Dunavant, vice president of the FedEx Express World Hub in Memphis, Tennessee. "At the Memphis hub alone we will see up to three million packages speed down 42 miles of conveyor belts on our busiest December day, each one scanned an average of 23 times to ensure we know where our customers shipments are at any given time. And as busy as we are in Memphis, FedEx hubs and stations around the world are feeling the holiday surge as well."

FedEx says the "busiest day" volumes and network capacity has jumped nearly 75 percent since Christmas 2005.
- Dec. 12, 2005 - 9.8 million shipments
- Dec. 18, 2006 - 10.6 million shipments
- Dec. 17, 2007 - 11.5 million shipments
- Dec. 15, 2008 - 12.0 million shipments
- Dec. 14, 2009 - 14.2 million shipments
- Dec. 13, 2010 - 15.6 million shipments

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas Day, FedEx forecasts a year-over-year increase largely driven by FedEx SmartPost, a residential shipping service designed for online and catalog retailers, as well as expected increased volume at FedEx Ground and FedEx Home Delivery, popular delivery service choices for personal shippers.