Today UPS (NYSE: UPS) kicks off its busiest week of the year, prepared to help retailers and shoppers by delivering more than 120 million packages worldwide over the next six days.

Thursday, Dec. 22, will be the busiest day of the year for UPS when almost 26 million packages will be delivered, or almost 300 every second. The company expects to deliver almost 25 million packages on several other days during Peak Week - Monday, Dec. 19, through Saturday, Dec. 24.

The UPS Airlines will add more than 400 additional flights per day and on its busiest day, process 3 million express shipments in a 24-hour period through its Louisville Worldport facility. Procrastinators can ship as late as Friday, Dec. 23, using UPS Next Day Air with Saturday delivery and have gifts arrive on Christmas Eve.

UPS also will manage more than 58 million online requests during the busiest tracking day of the year, Tuesday, Dec. 20.

For a quick summary of holiday stats, see UPS's peak week Infographic.

To help consumers enjoy a hassle-free holiday, UPS is offering a unique new service, UPS My Choice, that alerts you with an e-mail or text message the day before a package is delivered. For a small fee, registered members can reschedule or reroute the delivery. Since its launch on Oct. 3, a half-a-million consumers have registered for UPS My Choice. To register, visit: http://www.ups.com/MyChoice/PR.

Consumers looking for shipping information can visit UPS.com for do-it-yourself holiday shipping solutions and to prepare shipping labels. Packages then can be picked up by a UPS driver, placed in one of 40,000 UPS drop boxes or dropped off at a UPS Customer Center, The UPS Store, Mail Boxes Etc. or other authorized shipping outlets.

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