THANKS, JOE:

It's been a year of nonstop supply chain chaos: Covid outbreaks shut down factories and ports, a big boat blocked the Suez canal, and the ports at Los Angeles and Long Beach got so jammed that satellites watched the line of container ships waiting to unload their cargo grow from space. After all these disruptions, many analysts and journalists (including me) warned that 2021 could be a disastrous year for holiday shopping, marred by delayed gifts that wouldn't arrive in time for Christmas morning.

But, despite all that worry, the worst has not materialized--at least for US shoppers. Deliveries during the holiday rush have been remarkably normal. The country's largest carriers, FedEx, UPS, and the US Postal Service (USPS), got the vast majority of their packages to their customers' homes on time last week (Dec. 5-11), according to data from the consulting firm ShipMatrix.

The high on-time delivery rates are a testament to the work each carrier has done to ramp up hiring and expand their warehouses ahead of the holiday shopping rush; USPS, in particular, seemed to learn from its unreliable holiday service last year and improve its performance. The numbers also reflect a shift in Americans' holiday shopping habits: People ordered gifts online earlier and did more of their shopping in-person to avoid the shipping delays they'd been reading about in the press.

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