CEDARBURG — A Cedarburg woman is frustrated the package she sent to close friends in Albuquerque, New Mexico, may not make it in time for Christmas.
Donna Sobie wanted to gift her friends a little taste of Wisconsin, so she sent a box containing caramel apples from Amy's Candy Kitchen.
She mailed it on Dec. 15 via Priority Mail, and she said she expected delivery to take more than three days given the reported delays.
She didn't think it would take days to leave the state. USPS online tracking shows the package arrived at the Oak Creek Distribution Center on Dec. 18.
On Tuesday tracking showed it arrived at a facility in Salt Lake City, Utah. As of Wednesday the tracking shows the package is "in transit, arriving late."
"It doesn’t say which facility, it doesn’t say how long it's going to take to get there, I have no idea right now where my package is," Sobie said.
A spokesperson for USPS in Wisconsin said it operates 24/7, and its 644,000 employees nationwide are working hard.
“This negative impact is compounded by the temporary employee shortage due to the COVID-19 surge, as well as ongoing capacity challenges with airlifts and trucking for moving this historic volume of mail," a statement from USPS reads in part.
A spokesperson for the American Postal Workers Union said thousands of its members are working 12-14 hour days, and many are working Christmas Day. He said 18,750 workers are quarantining right now across the country. At Thanksgiving he said around 8,000 were out quarantining.
Meanwhile Sobie said she's going to call her friends in Albuquerque to keep a look out for the gift.
"I tried, I put it in the mail which I thought 10 days before Christmas, it’d be plenty of time for a 2-3 day delivery," Sobie said.
Christmas Day is a postal holiday, and regular mail delivery will resume Saturday. Only Priority Mail Express will be delivered on Christmas Day, according to the USPS website.
