Marie Luciano's first-grade students would like to have jumped inside Mark Coatney's 18-wheeler and taken it for a spin, but instead, the students settled Thursday for a quick tour of the inside and a deafening blow of the truck's horn before being ushered back inside Badger Clark Elementary School.

"That was awesome," Julian Trevino, 7, said while running from the cab of the truck into a group of his classmates.

It was a day the students had been waiting for, Luciano said.

Coatney, who drives truck for K & J Trucking out of Sioux Falls, has been keeping in touch with the students for a year, sending them books, a daily log of what he does and maps of where he has been. He pulled into Badger Clark's parking lot with a shipment of macaroni and cheese and beans in tow after a weeklong trip that took him from Pennsylvania to New York to Wisconsin to Minnesota and back to Rapid City.

"They've been looking forward to him coming in person," Luciano said.

The relationship between the class and the truck driver started after Coatney, the father of student Makala Coatney, asked Luciano if she would be interested in joining the pen-pal program through truckerbuddy.com.

"I thought it was a great idea," Luciano said, adding that it incorporates all areas of her curriculum, including math, geography and writing. "The kids were fascinated."

They also have a greater appreciation for what truckers do, Coatney said.

"It's made to educate the kids," he said, adding that truckers provide the main transportation for sellers nationwide. "When the prices go up, it's because it costs so much for us to get it there."

Luciano agreed.

"If it weren't for truckers, there would be a lot of empty shelves in the grocery stores," she told the students.

The students nodded their heads but couldn't stop talking about what they had seen in the cab of the truck - a bed, microwave and refrigerator.

They were soaking it up, Luciano said.

"Next year, I want to do it again," she said. "It's been so great."

Contact Kayla Gahagan at 394-8410 or kayla.gahagan@rapidcityjournal.com