Couriers prep for Valentine's deliveries

Drivers for FedEx, UPS and other couriers Monday are Cupid's helpers, delivering boxes of chocolates, packages of long-stemmed roses and other gifts sent in the spirit of St. Valentine.

"It's all about love," said John "Bo" Bochicchio, a FedEx courier for 16 years.

In the run-up to the holiday, the conveyor belt at FedEx's Melville center was a "sea of boxes," with packages of candy, cupcakes and flowers - mixed in with more usual everyday deliveries of electronics and diapers - flowing down the line, to be scanned, sorted and loaded on trucks.

Each Feb. 14, Bochicchio said, he doesn't exercise the option to leave items on a recipient's porch if he has a release. He always knocks.

"I want to see people's faces," he said.

Monday is expected to be an extremely busy one for the area's couriers. Residential deliveries for FedEx in the Long Island district, which also includes Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island, are expected to be up 40 percent over a regular Monday, said Nanette Malebranche, managing director for the district.

For UPS, "there will be some increased volume, though not equivalent to the week or two before Christmas," said Susan Rosenberg, the company's public relations manager in Atlanta. The U.S. Postal Service experiences its big Valentine's volume in greeting cards, and in most locations a "small to moderate bump in overnight package volume is expected on Monday," said Tom Rizzo, spokesman for the Long Island district.

Bochicchio, 52, whose route includes Lindenhurst, West Babylon, Amityville and Copiague, remembered the time he delivered two boxes of roses, from two different suitors, to the same young woman in a school office, eliciting smiles and comments from her colleagues. Another Valentine's Day, he was about to make a delivery when a man in full military uniform approached, saying he had sent the flowers to his mother, thinking he wouldn't make it home. Needless to say, the woman was thrilled to see both her son and the flowers, Bochicchio said.

Valentine's Day deliveries - intended specifically for the recipient - are more personal than those for Christmas holidays, which could be gifts to be wrapped and passed on to others, said Ellen Ferguson, 53, ground operations manager in the Melville FedEx depot, and a former courier.

One year, she recalled, she handed a box of Valentine's Day flowers to a woman, who said to her husband, "You got me flowers." But, she said, he replied with a scowl, "They're not from me."

On a more uplifting note, Malebranche told of the Valentine's Day that a man arranged for FedEx to deliver to his fiancee in Queens one dozen roses an hour for 10 hours. As the courier returned time and again, Malebranche said, the woman laughed and laughed, clearly "on cloud nine."