FedEx outlets move up last daily collection time

``The World On Time" is what package delivery service FedEx Corp. famously promises.

But in Greater Boston, FedEx has recently begun asking many customers for a 15- to 60-minute head start -- since the Interstate 90 tunnel closings last week began snarling traffic headed to Logan International Airport .

Around the metro area in the last week, several FedEx outlets have moved up their last daily collection time for overnight deliveries because vans heading to FedEx cargo jets at Logan can no longer use the Ted Williams Tunnel and are getting bogged down in detours through city streets and the Callahan Tunnel.

FedEx's decision to move up delivery collection deadlines at locations in Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Needham, Norwood, and Waltham is one of several steps taken by mail and package delivery businesses that have been particularly hard hit by the aftermath of the July 10 tunnel ceiling collapse that killed Jamaica Plain's Milena Del Valle.

UPS has added an extra nightly flight out of Logan to its Louisville, Ky., sorting and shipping hub to accommodate late-arriving delivery vans. The United States Postal Service, which sends over 30 tractor-trailer loads of mail every day from its main Boston sorting facility behind South Station to Logan, is allocating an hour more travel time for trucks that now have to go over the Tobin Bridge and down through Revere to get to the airport, spokesman Bob Cannon said.

``We haven't taken any collection boxes off the street, and we haven't changed any customer standards" for when mail and overnight express deliveries have to be dropped off, Cannon said. But because virtually every piece of first-class mail and express deliveries leaving Boston for destinations beyond New York goes by plane, Postal Service managers and drivers are having to tighten schedules and factor in long road delays, Cannon added.

Phil Orlandella , a spokesman for the Massachusetts Port Authority, which runs Logan, said Massport and airlines have gotten word out to airline passengers to allow extra time, about 30 minutes or so, to get to the airport. Air freight and overnight-cargo companies have had to be especially flexible and creative in dealing with traffic delays caused by the tunnel closings. ``It was confusing for everyone, but the delivery companies have been adjusting since day one," Orlandella said.

So far this year, Logan has handled an average 100,000 pounds a day of mail and over 1 million pounds daily of small packages and express shipments, according to Massport figures.

Jim McCluskey , a FedEx spokesman at its Memphis headquarters, said decisions about whether to push up final daily collection times have been left to branch managers.

A FedEx pickup site off Post Office Square in the Financial District, for example, has moved up its final daily collection time to 7 p.m. But a few blocks up Congress Street at 60 State St., the final daily drop-off is still collected at 9 p.m., store clerks said.

Generally, locations where final daily collections have been moved up are in areas from which van drivers were most dependent on using the I-90 tunnels to get to Logan. FedEx locations in Harvard Square and Copley Square moved up 30 minutes, as did stores in Chestnut Hill and the western suburbs. A Norwood FedEx location pushed its final collection from 6:15 p.m. to 6 p.m. But locations in Braintree, Kendall Square in Cambridge, and Framingham have not changed.

``Our local managers have a lot of discretion," McCluskey said. ``It's all being done to allow us the time needed to get things picked up and routed into the network."

Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.