Postal service distribution center is hopping during the holidays

TAMPA (FOX 13) - Short of Santa's workshop, the U.S. Postal Service's Ybor Distribution Center is about the busiest place you'll find this time of year.

It's five acres inside and requires extra hands around the holiday to get all the mail sorted and sent.

"It is really busy and its 24/7 and always, always, going," said Jane Donaldson with the U.S. Postal Service.

Hundreds of thousands of packages a day at that location get stacked, sorted and even take a ride on several conveyer belts.

Interestingly it is just a tiny slice of what the postal service will handle this holiday. 

From Thanksgiving to New Year's Eve, it'll deliver 15.5 billion pieces of mail.   

Packages alone will account for 600 million pieces of that, and that number up more than 10 percent from last year.  

"Now we get to, not give them a bill.  We get to give them something they really, really want, especially the little ones," said Donaldson.

And those deliveries will happen seven days a week leading up to Christmas.