The United States Postal Service is preparing for the future by testing new machinery and mailboxes during the holiday rush.
Medium-sized packages are a big part of USPS business, mostly because of the growing popularity of online shopping. The postal service expects to deliver 600 million parcels this holiday season alone.
The Denver sorting site is one of 18 facilities in the country testing new machinery to sort packages faster. It is about a football field long and has the ability to sort 7,200 packages every hour.
"Our parcel volume is exploding -- double digit growth the last several years," said David Rupert, with USPS Corporate Communications in the Western area.
Because the Postal Service is banking on the parcel business, they are also testing out larger mailboxes. Neighborhoods in Broomfield, Colorado; Williston, North Dakota; and Newhall, California all have the prototypes.
"It's considerably wider, and our old mailbox -- we get a lot of advertisements and stuff -- it would be stuffed in there," said Catherine Crisler. "The kids, especially, would try to pull stuff out and you'd end up with it all over the place."
With the larger mailboxes, the packages are less likely to get damaged or stolen.
Right now, neighbors are in the process of giving the USPS a bit of feedback. After the testing phase, the USPS will consider installing more parcel mailboxes in other neighborhoods across the country.
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