Thursday is the busiest delivery day of the year with postal carriers dropping off thousands of holiday packages to homes across Omaha.
With relatively mild temperatures and friendly people at home, letter carrier Mark Rettele says he's had harder days.
Rettele says it's nice to be Santa’s helper.
"Santa is magic, but he can only do so much,” Rettele said. “He has the elves help him make the toys and he has us help deliver them.”
One package at a time, mail carriers delivered roughly three million packages across Nebraska and southwestern Iowa Thursday.
"People are pretty happy to see (us),” Rettele said. “Kids get really excited. Parents are more relieved packages showed up when they wanted them.”
With temperatures in the upper 30s and calm winds, longtime west Omaha carrier Rettele says he's had rougher days.
"We had someone a couple years ago mailed a weight set using our flat rate boxes and that was awful,” he said.
This man says he used to work in shipping and understands how hard a day like this can be.
"I appreciate those guys for what they do and I'm actually waiting on some packages now so, I hope they get here soon," said Zachary Peck.
Rettele says he takes extra precautions to make sure people like Peck get their gifts this year.
“We try to put packages out of plain sight from the street and encourage customers to go to USPS.com,” he said. “You can get email and text alerts for when packages get delivered.”
While a delivery day like Thursday requires a lot of hard work, Rettele says he enjoys his job during the holiday season.
"It feels good to make people happy,” he said. “It doesn't matter if you're a big company mailing thousands of packages a day across the country or a grandma sending one package per year to her grandson, we take pride in getting it delivered on time."
The high volume of packages will continue for a couple weeks after Christmas as people get gifts that were mailed late.
