Hudson ? Although its population is small with just 125 people, this Stafford County town boasts the county’s largest private business and a cafe that fills its tables every Sunday.

Hudson even has a bank.

So, it doesn’t sit well with locals that their post office, which has been open since 1887, could be closing in coming months.

“We’re anticipating the worst but hoping for the best,” said Hudson Mayor Pete Witt, who said he wrote a letter urging U.S. Postal Service officials to rethink the proposal. “We’re a little town, and we don’t want to lose anything — especially a post office.”

Hudson isn’t the only community, however, on the government’s potential chopping block. Of the state’s 600 post offices, USPS officials are looking at 11 for closure, said Brian Sperry, regional spokesman for the U.S. Postal Service based in Colorado.

That includes a post office in the town of Summerfield, in Marshall County, which has as many as 160 residents, and the state’s smallest incorporated city, Freeport, population 5.

The reason is a decline in mail volume and increasing competition, Sperry said. Thanks to electronic billing, email, the Internet and texting, mail volume has dropped 20 percent nationwide — or the equivalent of 43 billion pieces of mail. In the past decade, first-class stamped mail has fallen 50 percent.

Thus, he said, the USPS is suffering financially. The postal service loses $23 million a day and ended fiscal year 2010 with an $8.5 billion shortfall.

Moreover, the USPS is a self-supporting agency and is not financed by taxpayer dollars. “Business as usual is not an option for us,” Sperry said. “In response to those challenges, we’re reviewing our facilities to identify inefficiencies and savings.”

In all, the Postal Service is looking at potentially closing 2,000 locations across the United States, he said. Post offices targeted have a declining workload and customer demand, as well as a vacant postmaster position.

“I can tell you the daily retail transactions of many of these locations have fallen into the single digits,” he said.

The study does take into account the effect on the community served, impact to employees, economic savings and service alternatives. He said it could be months before communities know their final fate.

If a community’s post office closes, residents would receive their mail through a rural carrier and would be able to keep their ZIP code.

Sperry didn’t know the exact savings closing Kansas’ 11 post offices would have on the budget, but added the Postal Service was doing everything it could to keep expenses down.

“Like any company whose revenue would drop 20 percent, we have to reduce costs to remain in business,” he said.

These facts don’t surprise Elaine Fischer, who for 30 years helped run Hudson’s post office and served for several years as a postmaster. There have been three meetings in the past few decades regarding the post office’s fate. One took away Hudson’s rural postal route. Another reduced the office’s hours to half days.

The latest meeting came last month with government officials announcing its closure plans. Few attended, she said.

“I told them when we had the second meeting that everyone knows when they take your rural route the next is the post office,” Fischer said of the potential closing. “I think (our fate) is cut and dry. If we had a postmaster, I think we could save it, but I think that is really hurting us.”

The thought of losing the post office concerns Brenda Grabast, who works at Hudson’s Stafford County Flour Mills Co., one of the county’s largest employers. She said the mill uses the post office daily to ship flour to clients all over the United States, including a large customer base along the East Coast.

If the post office closes, the company would have to use UPS, which has higher shipping rates.