FedEx Corp., United Parcel Service Inc. and the U.S. Postal Service expect to process a record number of packages this peak season, many of them e-commerce orders, and the week before Christmas is usually the heaviest period. The Postal Service, which makes more deliveries to homes than its two commercial rivals, already plans to exceed its initial forecast of nearly 850 million packages between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, a Postal Service spokesman said.

One added wrinkle this year: Christmas falls on a Monday, and not all packages are delivered on Sundays, putting even more pressure on shippers and the delivery companies alike.

FedEx said that it expects to handle as many as 400 million packages this season and that it has upgraded its network with a new hub for its ground deliveries and the expansion of two existing hubs.

Patrick Fitzgerald, a senior vice president of marketing and communications at FedEx, said the carrier has a “pretty good idea” of how many items it will receive ahead of Christmas, along with where it will need to deploy trucks and planes, thanks to ongoing contact with retailers.

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