Trucker Buddy is a non-profit organization dedicated to helping educate and mentor the nation's schoolchildren via a pen-pal relationship between professional truck drivers and children in grades 2-8. Trucker Buddy matches classes of students with professional truck drivers. On a regular basis, these drivers share news about their travels with their assigned classes, and provide a format for the enhancement of the grade school curriculum in reading, writing, geography, mathematics, social studies, and history. Since 1992, Trucker Buddy has helped educate over a half million schoolchildren and introduced them to a group of caring, compassionate men and women, the nation’s professional truck drivers.

Our trucker buddy this year is Rodney Holtzapple and he lives in Virginia. He is a carrier for Prime Inc. and he sends us postcards from different states. As a class we track his travels on a map and write back to him once a month. He sometimes asks us geography questions and we write back with our answers and also tell him about some of the things we are studying in school. Here are some of the places Rodney has sent us postcards from.

Virginia - Rodney writes to say that Fredericks, Virginia is his home town. There is a lot of history there as it was a big part of the Civil War.

Florida - Rodney picked up a load of glass in Pennsylvania and hauled it to Florida.

Tennessee - Rodney sent a postcard from Tennessee as he was passing through on his way from Pennsylvania to Dallas, Texas.

Montana - Rodney stopped in Montana on his way from Virginia to Washington. He asked the class to figure out how many states he had to go through on his route.

Colorado - Rodney sent a postcard from Colorado on his way from Dallas, Texas to Spokane, Washington.

Arizona - Rodney was just passing through Arizona and wanted to send us a postcard from there.

The last time Rodney wrote he asked us to name his new red truck. He's trying to get a load to carry that will take him through South Dakota so the children can meet him and see his truck.

January, 2002 - We just heard from Rodney again. Tyler from our class won the contest to name his new truck. It will be called Big Red. Tyler will receive a prize for naming his truck. He has asked us to give him directions from Fredericksburg, Virginia to Letcher as our next assignment.