DHL and Deutsche Post are currently dealing with an onslaught of 9 million shipments per day thanks to the store closings due to the coronavirus. That’s far above the usual average for this time of year of 5.2 million daily shipments. The companies describe the load as typical for the days running up to Christmas, but complain that they had virtually no time to ramp up capacity in order to be able to handle it. The situation is so critical that both mail and land cargo staff have been shifted to parcel deliveries while even administrative employees are volunterring. Some van delivery staff are handling twice as many packages as normal and the company is running into to such difficulties that delivery times have slowed down considerably and some pick-up dates with online stores have been cancelled – without a replacement date being set. The newspaper Bild reports that nearly 70,000 parcels have gotten stuck in the company’s Hamburg-Allermohe center in the past week, with hundreds of thousands piling up in delays across the country.
