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Non-Tech : FedEx (FDX) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Darryl Olson who wrote (210)	10/23/1998 10:18:00 AM
From: Darryl Olson	Respond to of 524

UPS sees package volume increase due to Internet. Friday October 23, 7:34 am Eastern Time UPS sees holiday package hike due to Internet By June Preston ATLANTA, Oct 22 (Reuters) - United Parcel Service of America Inc [UPS.CN] said Thursday its Christmas holiday deliveries will increase by 19 million packages this year, due in part to a larger number of consumers who will shop on the Internet. ''When we finished last year's holiday peak season, the conclusion was that for the first time we were starting to see junps in delivery traffic and volume that we could attribute to people buying gifts and products on the Internet,'' UPS spokesman Norman Black told Reuters. Black said UPS would not have specific Internet projections before next week, but based on last year's shipments the company expects the increase to be significant. ''It was more than picking up the phone and calling your favorite catalog operator,'' he said. ''There was, for the first time, a surge of business coming from the Internet people.'' Black said the company expected to ship 19 million more packages this year than last and would add 90,000 seasonal workers, including 13,000 additonal drivers during the last week of the season, Dec. 17-24. Last year UPS delivered 276 million packages between Thanksgiving and Christmas. This year, the company anticipates it will handle 295 million packages, Black said. ''It's going to be up significantly, but that's in part because there's another day in this holiday season,'' he said. ''The day of the week that Christmas falls on affects volume,'' he said. ''This year it's a Friday, and that has an impact on flow because the weekend before will be a big, heavy shopping time and consumers will then turn immediately to get their presents shipped.'' Black refused to speculate on what would happen if pilots at Federal Express Corp (NYSE:FDX - news) were to go on strike as authorized by their union leaders. A strike, if the pilots were to vote in favor of it, would begin just in time for the critical holiday shipping period. ''We're not going to comment on the labor situation at Fed Ex,'' Black said. ''We have planned our peak system to handle the anticipated volume of our anticipated customers. That is what we do every year, and that is the capacity we are adding.''