Trucker Buddy News

Trucker Buddy news

Buddies bring teaching topics to life

Tracey Alf and Sean Dillon, Trucker Buddies to Amy Donohue’s second-grade class in Clifton Park, NY, have been named Trucker Buddies of the Month for August.

“Tracey and Sean are super buddies,” writes Donohue in the nomination letter. “I could not have asked for a better set of pen pals!”

In addition to sending postcards, Alf and Dillon e-mail their class at Arongen Elementary School at least two times a week. To spice things up for the students, they also send postcards and e-mails from their dog, Buddy.

“They’ll describe something from a dog’s point of view, and we will have to guess what is going on,” Donohue explains. “They send us trivia questions along with the roads they take so we can follow the route.”

Alf and Dillon run as company drivers for the Yanke Group of Companies in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. After two years with the program and teacher Donohue, they had an opportunity to visit with their class for the first time this past June.

The students make being Trucker Buddies fun and easy, according to the couple. “We were surprised at how enthusiastic the kids were, and how interested they are in what we are doing,” Alf relates. “It is a constant source of entertainment to watch how their second-grade minds interpret what we say.”

Alf and Dillon joined Trucker Buddy because they “don’t have any little people in our lives,” Alf says. Now they are hooked. “We went through postcard withdrawal at the beginning of the summer, so I started sending postcards to a friend’s child,” adds Dillon.

The couple plans to continue with the Trucker Buddy program, again matched with Donohue, and they look forward to starting with a new second-grade class.

“We love being Trucker Buddies. We totally love it!” Alf says.

Each Trucker Buddy Driver of the Month receives a personalized jacket, along with a check for $300 to spend on the class and $200 in Trucker Buddy merchandise, compliments of ACS MultiMedia Advertising. Alf and Dillon are among some 3,500 other professional drivers who share their time with elementary classes throughout the world. The only criteria to be a Trucker Buddy is to be a truck driver and willing to send a postcard each week to a class in grades two through eight. Drivers and teachers can find out more about the program by visiting www.truckerbuddy.org or calling 1-800-MY BUDDY.