U.S. Postal Service Eyes Closing Thousands of Post OfficesU.S. Postal Service eyes closing thousands of nationwide post offices. Will the one in your local town be going away?

The U.S. Postal Service plays two roles in America: an agency that keeps rural areas linked to the rest of the nation, and one that loses a lot of money.

Now, with the red ink showing no sign of stopping, the postal service is hoping to ramp up a cost-cutting program that is already inflicting pain around the country. The agency will start the process of closing as many as 2,000 post offices in March. In addition, it is reviewing another 16,000 that are operating at a deficit.

The law currently allows the postal service to close post offices only for maintenance problems, lease expirations or other reasons that don’t include profitability. The news is crushing in many remote communities where the post office is often the heart of the town. Shuttering them, critics say, also puts an enormous burden on people, particularly on the elderly, who find it difficult to travel out of town.

The postal service argues that its network of some 32,000 brick-and-mortar post offices, many built in the horse-and-buggy days, is outmoded. The agency is dealing with an era when more people are more mobile and paying their bills online. It also wants post offices to be profitable to help it overcome record $8.5 billion in losses in fiscal year 2010.