UPS CFO Kurt Kuehn Sees Boom In eCommerce

Kurt Kuehn, Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of

, discussed the

season, from online sales to delivery expectations Monday morning on CNBC's Squawk Box. Holiday shopping is an undisputed beast, and this year is truly not too different. According to Kuehn, UPS expects to pick up 32 million packages this Cyber Monday, one of the company's biggest operational days. “We're seeing expanded use of the Internet, so in a lot of cases what we see coming into our shipping network is greater than the aggregated retail sales numbers,” said Kuehn. Kuehn said that even brick and motor stores have increased their focus on eCommerce dollars, which has brought retail outlets into acting as distribution centers.

“We're making pickups at hundreds of stores on a daily basis now for local delivery, and that's one way that brick and motors retailers can compete with, you know, great companies like Amazon,” said Kuehn. He sees this year's shortened shopping season as a window for increased volume in sales with a total of six less shopping days than in the typical holiday period between Thanksgiving and Christmas. He said that UPS hires approximately 55,000 employees seasonally to handle the increase in package deliveries. Kuehn noted analyst predictions of a small 2 to 3 percent increase in retail sales this year. “I think we'll see a big rush, actually, the week before Christmas. Actually, our largest day will be December 16, when we pick up over 34 million packages,” said Kuehn.