UPS forecasts 20 million deliveries, 16 million tracking requests Dec. 21

If a surge to shopping sites on the day after the Thanksgiving weekend has earned that day the title of “Black Monday,” this year’s Dec. 21 might be dubbed “Brown Tuesday.” That’s the day United Parcel Service expects both to deliver the most packages and receive the most online tracking requests of any day this holiday season, the carrier reports.

UPS expects to deliver more than 20 million packages on Dec. 21—that’s an average 230 packages per second—and to receive 16 million online tracking requests. That’s well above this year’s average tracking request rate of about 9.1 million per day, and above the 12 million online tracking requests received on last year’s peak day, UPS reports.

Online tracking requests represent only a small portion of total visits to UPS.com, which received in excess of 1 billion hits in 2003 during the five days leading up to Dec. 25, and 300 million hits on its busiest day last holiday season. Consumers also visited the site to check delivery deadlines, pricing, and a variety of other holiday shipping-related information, according to a UPS spokesperson. UPS Online Tools including online package tracking, launched in 1999, are now used by more than 200,000 customers in 40 countries, including, as of this year, eBay, the carrier reports.