PLYMOUTH, Minn. - You can set your radio and your watch to the holiday display at Dave Haberle's Plymouth home.
"The show starts at 4:30 and runs continuously until 10:30."
But Haberle says even after his lights go out, his mail sometimes isn't in.
"Sometimes 10, 10:30 at night," he said. "And sometimes things aren't delivered until the next day."
Haberle is far from alone. KARE 11 has been hearing from viewers all over the area talking about mail delivery that stretches late into the night, with many asking, why?
According to the Postal Service, it's partly a staffing issue. They're still looking to fill more than 700 long-term jobs in Minnesota and western Wisconsin, including both rural and city carriers, along with mail processors and clerks.
And they're also still short about 60 seasonal holiday mail handlers.
But according to the Post Office, the biggest reason for the late deliveries is volume.
A staggering 915 million packages and pieces of mail are projected to come through this region between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve, with 742 million in the Twin Cities area alone.
That's up 9 percent over 2017, and an increase of 27 percent in just the last three years.
On Tuesday night, Haberle's mail came just before 7 p.m., and he hopes his lights make the season a bit brighter for those carriers working well into the night.
"We're confident that they'll deliver," he said. "It'd be nice to know when sometimes but, you know, they always come through."
Even though it's happening later, the Postal Service tells us they're trying to make sure every piece of mail is delivered each day, and in the three weeks before Christmas they will also be delivering on Sundays.