Some offices and employees that are considered essential within the federal government may have to work on Thursday, Thanksgiving, but the majority of the employees who are with the United States Postal Service get the federal holiday off. There is no USPS mail delivery on Thanksgiving and local post office facilities will not be open to customers.
As the USPS website notes, Thanksgiving is one of the holidays each year for which the post office is closed. There will be no standard mail deliveries on Thursday, nor will there be any package deliveries.
There is one exception when it comes to Thanksgiving mail delivery. The USPS Priority Mail Express service does run every day of the year, regardless of federal holidays. Any packages in the Priority Mail Express system will be delivered on Thanksgiving if that is when its delivery was slated to happen.
Customers may hope to hit one of the USPS self-service kiosks on Thanksgiving to still get their mail moving along. However, many of these stations are in post office lobbies, and thus will be inaccessible on Thanksgiving. Those that may be accessible elsewhere can be used, but customers should not expect to see their mail being processed until Friday when regular USPS services resume.
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Now that Amazon utilizes USPS for some package delivery, customers occasionally see their orders arrive on Sundays. That has led some people to wonder if Amazon packages will be delivered on Thanksgiving, as well as other federal holidays.
The answer seems to be no on that front. Any Amazon packages in the mail stream that would normally be slated for a Thursday delivery should be delivered on Friday.
These days, plenty of people prepare mail from home to send via USPS. When it comes to Thanksgiving and other similar holidays, people can go ahead and print postage with their at-home utilities, such as Stamps.com. However, labels will be printed with Friday’s date, November 29, rather than the date of Thanksgiving.
UPS and FedEx follow similar schedules. The UPS website notes that the company does not deliver on Thanksgiving. Offices are closed as well. The exception is for UPS Express Critical packages, which will be delivered on Thanksgiving.
The same can be said for FedEx. The company’s website indicates that FedEx Custom Critical services are running on Thanksgiving, but everything else is on hold until Friday.
While it isn’t always clear what is or is not open on a holiday like Thanksgiving, USPS is consistent each year. The day is considered a federal holiday, and, as such, there is no standard delivery or processing. Customers should plan accordingly.