With the holidays coming up companies and distributors advise you should start buying your gifts before Dec. 9 due to the shipping delays around the world. 

   UPS President Scott Price stated in a press release that the public should order stuff earlier and not later.

“I half-jokingly tell people ‘Order your Christmas presents now because otherwise on Christmas day there may just be a picture of something that’s not coming until February or March.”

       Delays in shipping have been bad since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, though this year it has been the worst. The 5% increase in the prices of items this year led to many issues that resulted in shipping and delivering delays. 

       Since the start of Covid-19, a lack of workers has caused many companies to either shut down or pay their employees more money to convince them to stay. 

       Due to the lack of workers, too limited products are being manufactured, causing this cycle of supply and demand to get knocked off balance and demand increase. Due to the holiday season the demand is rising even more leading to shipping/delivering delays to worsen. 

        Bloomington’s Landlocked Music, which is downtown, has experienced shipping issues. 

“We are dealing with shipping delays every single day. Both incoming and outgoing….we stopped shipping anything outside the U.S. last year and don’t expect to restart anytime soon.” said Jason Nickey, a worker at Landlocked Music.

       With everything knocked off balance, the shipping is going to be slow and take a while to even make landfall. Many cargo ships have been having to wait outside of ports for many hours, or even days, due to the limited room they have at ports for ships and cargo containers to be unloaded. Following the long wait they have many people working extra hours making sure everything gets unloaded and delivered to the right places.

       Rylan Kelptz, a sophomore at Bloomington High School South, is worried about the gift she is buying this winter. 

“I’m ordering a gift online for my friend this year, and I’m honestly worried about how long shipping will take. I’ll probably buy it really early so it’s still in stock and arrives on time.”

      Black Friday and Cyber Monday are coming up and are huge days where most people buy holiday gifts; which will only add to the problem. In preparation for these two days of deals and the slow shipping, many businesses are releasing deals early so your items are delivered before the holidays. Nonetheless, some businesses on the other hand may not be doing these early deals, because of this you should try to buy the hottest, most trendiest items you plan to buy. Try to buy these items if there are no early deals because if an item is a trendy item at the moment the odds of the manufacturing company making more of this product is higher, meaning it’s getting shipped out more frequently and your chances of getting that item on time is better.