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Unlike a regular post office, the location is contracted to private owners. Now, it's one of 20 contract postal units around the country scheduled to be closed after an agreement made last year between the unions and the postal service.

Hutchison says almost every day she gathers petition signatures to send to Congressman John Carter’s Bell County office to keep the post office open.

"I just think it's something that we need every person that lives in south Temple to get behind us, because we have a lot of success in numbers," Hutchison said.

Owners of the office don’t understand the decision to close either, especially since they say their business nets a profit of $1 million a year for the postal service. Last fiscal year, the postal service was more than $5 billion in the red.

"I have some hope that there will be some resolution at some point, because closing this place down doesn't make sense," manager Brent Martin said.

Congressman John Carter also hopes the post office can stay open.

"A place that is meeting a need and providing a service, making a profit which goes into the postal service,’ he said. “It makes no sense to kill something like that."

Martin believes his location has fallen victim to something bigger than his south Temple business.

"We're caught in the middle of a power struggle between the postal service and the unions, my understanding,” Martin said. “Basically it's a game of chicken to see who is going to blink first."

Congressman Carter says the postal service isn’t using good management skills, and should focus on hiring more union employees. He believes the Bell County community should continue to speak out against the closure.

"It's not a union fight, it's a service fight," he said. "They want to keep that good service."

The American Postal Workers Union contends the location is an improperly opened postal unit. Among the things the union takes issue with is the availability of PO boxes.

According to the manager of the postal unit, their contract states they're allowed to have PO boxes.