Dive Brief:

• FedEx is predicting record shipping volumes this holiday season, The Wall Street Journal reported.
• The delivery service expects shipments from Black Friday through Christmas Eve to rise 12.4% over last year to 317 million pieces.
• FedEx expects to more than double its normal package volume over three days, Thanksgiving and the first two Mondays in December, including Cyber Monday, the big day for online shopping.

Dive Insight:

FedEx is signing up more than more than 55,000 seasonal workers, 5,000 more than last year, to handle the holiday surge as it invests in automation and expansion.

Over the past few holiday seasons, FedEx and United Parcel Service have both stumbled to keep up with the heavy volume of shipment increases in the era of online shopping.

But this year should be different, Patrick Fitzgerald, senior vice president of marketing and communications for FedEx, told the Wall Street Journal. “There’s a relatively small number of e-tail and retail customers that drive the peaks during the holiday,” he said, implicitly referring to Amazon. “Because we work so closely with them, not just this year, but every year, we can really understand some of the patterns.”

FedEx’s shipment forecast growth this year is three times the rate of overall holiday sales, according to Seeking Alpha.