US Postal Service in final crunch before Christmas

OPA-LOCKA, Fla. – The holiday rush is in full swing. Inside South Florida's largest postal service sorting facility, a team of 1,000 are working around the clock to make sure packages make it to everyone's doorstep in time for Christmas.

The 590,000 square-foot facility near Opa-locka Executive Airport is a well-oiled machine that sorts 500,000 packages every day from Thanksgiving Day through the new year.

"Every time I give a tour I'm amazed, and for what we do and the for the price that you pay, people would be really surprised what goes on behind the scenes," said USPS's Debora Fetterly.

The next few days will be the busiest for the United States Postal Service, with an estimated 541 million packages delivered across the country.

"We're really excited," said USPS's Juan Gonzalez. "The package growth is in double digits and we're taking advantage of it. Every year we've deployed more equipment. We start planning since the year before."

Part of the magic is precision. From the second a truck pulls up and packages are scanned and shipped off, the clock to Dec. 25 is ticking.

"We have a set amount of time where our team will tweak the machinery even if it's running very well," Fetterly said. "We want it to be top optimal performance."

Once all of the packages are sorted and placed in their proper bins, they're lined up along a dock, ready to ship out.

"There is no better point for us than Dec. 24, when you have a clean building and you know you did everything you had to do. It's that satisfaction," Gonzalez said.