Online retail giant Amazon has predicted that the busiest day for online shopping orders will be Monday 2 December, which is likely to trigger an increase in volumes handled by parcel carriers.

Amazon saw around 3.5m items ordered on last year’s ‘Cyber Monday’, which fell on 3 December 2012, and estimated that a truck left one its eight UK fulfilment centres every two minutes and 10 seconds.

It also expects that its sale at the end of the month, known as ‘Black Friday Deals Week’, will be Amazon's busiest week to date when it begins on 25 November.

The retailer also recently revealed that 800 of its temporary staff across its network of distribution centres will move into permanent roles before the end of the year, as well as hiring an additional 15,000 temporary staff to help with the Christmas peak.

UK operations director Catherine McDermott said: “Every one of our employees will be working over the Christmas period to delight customers by delivering millions of items on a daily basis and we are pleased to be creating 800 new permanent roles in our centres ahead of the Christmas period.”

Amazon plans to open four more regional depots under its Amazon Logistics brand in 2014.

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