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ByScottMayerowitz The Associated Press LOUISVILLE, KY. Thehum- ming is constant; a low- pitched drone from 155 miles of conveyer belts racing packages in every direction. Boxes shift from one belt to another and bump into a metal wall. Thud. Thud. Thud. In the background, trucks beep and jet engines roar. Forget jingling bells and ho-ho-hos, these are now the sounds of the holidays. As more gift-givers shop online, there are more packages to ship. Online sales now account for 10 percent of all shopping and 15 percent during the holi- days, according to research firm Forrester. That leaves FedEx and UPS with a com- bined 947 million packages to deliver between Black Friday and Christmas Eve — up 8 percent from last holiday season's forecasts. For UPS, the key to get- ting all those last-second orders delivered on time is Worldport, a massive sort- ing facility located between the Louisville airport's two main runways. On a typi- cal night, 1.6 million pack- ages pass through. Just be- fore Christmas, there can be 4 million, peaking on Monday night. (UPS plans to deliver about 36 million pack- ages on Tuesday, its busi- est day of the year, up from 35 million last year. That includes all of Worldport's shipments plus those trav- eling by truck.) Standing next to the runways just after mid- night, jet headlights can be seen lined up miles away. Every 60 seconds another plane lands on one of the two parallel runways and pulls up to the facility — the size of 90 football fields — to unload its goods. If everything goes right, the packages are just touched twice by hu- mans: first when pulled out of large aircraft ship- ping containers and then again at the end of their journey through the con- veyors and into a new bin and another jet. The past two years have been rough for express shippers. In 2013, they under- estimated American's growing fervor for on- line shopping. Throw in bad weather, and deliver- ies backed up. Some gifts didn't arrive in time for Christmas. UPS and Fe- dex spent heavily last year to ensure better perfor- mance, but still had some major hiccups. Staples, Toys 'R Us, Best Buy, Crate & Barrel, J.C. Penney and Kohl's were among the re- tailers who missed deliv- ery to at least one part of the country, according to industry tracking firm StellaService. To prevent similar mis- haps, UPS and FedEx have been working with ma- jor retailers to hone their forecasts and have sched- uled their extra holiday workers to better meet the shipping spikes right af- ter Thanksgiving and the weekend before Christmas. Some third-party tracking services have signaled a few issues with 2015 de- liveries but UPS spokes- man Mike Mangeot said last week that more than 96 percent of packages are being delivered on time in December and that UPS ex- pects packages to arrive by Christmas. "In many cases custom- ers are receiving the pack- ages earlier than promised as we are advancing deliv- eries to make sure the net- work remains ready for any spikes as last-minute Christmas shipping ap- proaches," says Mangeot. At first glance, Kentucky doesn't seem like the epi- center of holiday shipping. After all, Louisville isn't the geographic center of the U.S. And this city of 600,000 people is hardly the largest in the country. Best known for its wooden baseball bats and being home to the Kentucky Derby, the city does, how- ever, have relatively good weather and a geography that is perfect for shipping. (FedEx has a similar oper- ation in Memphis, Tennes- see.) "It's just an ideal loca- tion for us," says Gary Kel- ley, manager of the UPS next day shipping divi- sion at Worldport. "We are within two hours (flying time) of 75 percent of the population and within four hours of 95 percent." And when you are rush- ing packages overnight, that proximity to the coun- try's largest cities matters. A plane from Seattle might be carrying over- night packages bound for New York, Miami or Chi- cago. It will stop in Ken- tucky. All the boxes and envelopes are unloaded, likely by college students pulling the ultimate all- nighter — they make up 70 percent of the employ- ees here. Next, the packages go onto conveyers where red lasers scan labels and then the system automatically sorts the boxes and directs them to new shipping con- tainers. UPS has 38,000 such containers and they typically hold about 400 packages. Workers load them back up and then drag the heavy contain- ers across a floor of rollers back onto various planes that head out around the globe. Up to 416,000 packages can be processed each hour. Typically, it only takes 13 minutes for a package to travel the web of belts and chutes. In a five hour period, 130 planes have landed, unloaded, reloaded and returned to the skies. In another part of the com- plex, 300 trucks do a simi- lar dance. ONLINE SALES Sh ip pi ng m an ia : ru sh in g to d el iv er m il li on s of g i s PATRICKSEMANSKY—THEASSOCIATEDPRESS Parcels make their way along some of Worldport's 155 miles of conveyor belts in Louisville, Ky. If everything goes right, the packages are just touched twice by humans: first when pulled out of large aircra shipping containers and then again at the end of their journey through the conveyors and into a new bin and another jet. Alloffersforalimitedtime.Notallbuyerswillqualifyforindividualprograms.SeeRedBluffChrysler/Jeep/Dodge/Ramforcompletedetailsandvehiclequalificationsforallcurrentlyrunningprograms.0%and1.9%APRfinancing are not applicable on these new selected models. All rebates in lieu of special APRs offered by Chrysler. 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