JEFFERSON, Ga. Canadian couple Tracey Alf and Sean Dillon have been awarded Augusts Trucker Buddy Driver of the Month honour. The couple are Trucker Buddies to Amy Donohue’s second-grade class in Clifton Park, N.Y.

“Tracey and Sean are super buddies,” wrote Donohue in the nomination letter. “I could not have asked for a better set of pen pals! I’ll let them know the topics we are working on, and they find a way to include real life examples of it in their e-mails.”

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

Alf and Dillon, Arnprior, Ont., are company drivers for the Yanke Group of Companies in Saskatoon, Sask. After two years with the program and teacher Donohue, they got to visit with their class for the first time this past June.

“We want to thank our company, Yanke, for arranging the visit,” Dillon related. “It was a logistical feat to get us there, but they made it happen.”

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 said. “It is a constant source of entertainment 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 said. Now, they are hooked, she added. “We went through postcard withdrawal at the beginning of the summer, so I started sending postcards to a friend’s child.”

They plan to continue with the Trucker Buddy program, again matched with Donohue, and look forward to starting with a new second-grade class.

“We love being Trucker Buddies. We totally love it,” Alf said.