Be a good buddy

Looking ahead gets tougher all the time. Not because there’s no hope of accurate predictions but because lately all we seem to have had is trouble of one sort or another. Why should we expect any different in the future?

Well, I’m a reasonably optimistic guy but I’m not going to tell you insurance rates will fall tomorrow, that Americans will soon forget about our one and lonely mad cow, that you’ll see only black ink on your year-end statements. Wish I could.

Fact is, much of the strife that colours all our lives these days is beyond our control. With few exceptions, our ability to change the course of big events is limited at best. We’re left with doing the job the best we know how and hoping it’s enough.

The key is to look for small victories, for places where you really can make a difference. If you’re a truck driver or owner-operator, for instance, how about befriending a class of schoolkids and helping them understand the larger world by telling them about your travels? As a bonus, your effort will improve our industry’s public image and you’ll have good fun in the process.

I’m talking about Trucker Buddy International, a non-profit group launched nearly 11 years ago by an Arizona truck driver named Gary King. He started a pen-pal relationship with a class of fourth graders and their teacher. It worked so well that he helped other drivers follow suit. And since then more than 500,000 public-school kids have had the benefit of knowing somebody who roams the continent by truck and tells them about it by way of postcards and letters and sometimes personal visits.

Headquartered in Waupaca, Wisc., Trucker Buddy International does nothing but provide a link between truckers who love to talk about what they do and classrooms full of kids in grades two through eight who’d love to hear about it.

Ellen Voie, executive director of the non-profit organization, is currently managing links between 4,000 truckers and 4,400 classrooms. The idea behind Trucker Buddy is to have a driver relay information and stories about his travels to students in an assigned classroom. They in turn pose questions, tell personal stories, or respond to the trucker’s questions. With the advent of e-mail, messages fly at a furious pace, and often include digital photographs and descriptions of the driver’s travels. Many drivers still prefer to send a barrage of postcards–and trinkets too–from their various ports of call.

Stephan and Ellie Bouderlique are nearly perfect examples of what the Trucker Buddy program is all about. Team drivers for Penner International out of Winnipeg, they’ve been linked with a fifth-grade class at Seattle’s Assumption-St. Bridget School for many years, and paid their first visit in their Western Star a couple of years ago. To say the kids were excited is an understatement. The kids themselves had even sent out a press release to local media, announcing the visit, which the Seattle Times picked up. A great story appeared in the paper the next day, which did trucking’s image–and Canada’s–no harm at all.

The Bouderliques were named the program’s Trucker Buddies of the Month in January 2001. They write from all over the continent, from Montreal to Nashville, Calgary to Philadelphia, and the sources of their frequent postcards and monthly letters are each marked by a red pushpin on a map in the classroom.

Andy Susin of J.B.M. Logistics in Saskatoon says he sometimes has to work at it a bit, but hasn’t had the slightest regret about getting involved.

“Being a Trucker Buddy has changed the way I do my job,” he says. “The urge to get a little aggressive with an annoying four-wheeler used to get the better of me, especially when I couldn’t relate to the people in the car ahead. But when one has class after class of little Trucker Buddies out in the world, the people in that annoying car are no longer non-persons. They become the little people that I care about. Those kids are in awe of me and what I do. The last thing I want to do is lose their respect.”

Jean Catudal, a French-Canadian driver with SGT International, adds another dimension to the Trucker Buddy concept. His class is in Tonawanda, near Buffalo, N.Y., and practically on the Canadian border, but the kids had never been exposed to Francophone culture. Catudal says he’s frequently asked to speak French when he visits the school with his truck.

“One of the principles of Trucker Buddy is to improve the impression the public has of truck drivers,” he says. “Can there be any better way than this?”

There’s really no downside here, so why not look into it? There are only 75 Canadian drivers and 15 Canadian classrooms in the mix. That’s not enough. If you’re a fleet owner or manager, post this article in the drivers’ room. Send a copy to your kid’s teacher. Or contact Trucker Buddy at 1-800-My Buddy (692-8339) or www.truckerbuddy.org. Membership is absolutely free, and it’s bound to improve your outlook on life in general. s

Rolf Lockwood (rolf@todaystrucking.com) is the editorial director of Today’s Trucking.