Spend a few minutes with Trico’s transportation team, and you quickly realize two things: first, that keeping buses on the road is a job of staggering responsibility; and second, that the people doing it genuinely enjoy one another’s company. Their easy laughter and back-and-forth jokes could make you forget, for a moment, that they’re responsible for the safe passage of hundreds of students each day.

Darl Lodge, Class of ’81, has been turning wrenches at Trico for more than two decades. Before arriving here, Darl had worked everywhere from auto dealerships to trucking firms to coal dockyards, fixing everything from sedans to semis to heavy equipment. “A mechanic usually has it in his blood,” he humbly shrugged. “You start tearing things apart when you’re a kid and eventually figure out how to put them back together.”

Beside him is Clint Young, class of 2013, who joined Trico just this past Easter. He brings with him a bachelor’s degree in automotive technology from SIU but he’s quick to add that nothing replaces on-the-job learning. “You can know every theory in the book, but until you’re standing over a bus that won’t start five minutes before a route, you don’t really know.”

And then there’s Laura Korando, Trico’s Director of Transportation. She started as an aide 18 years ago and, after a sudden vacancy, found herself first in the office role and eventually officially leading the department. “At some point, I figured I’d been doing the work already—I may as well take the title,” she laughed.

The three of them form a team defined by mutual respect and shared humor. In the shop, Clint teases Darl about being “old school,” while Darl fires back about Clint’s shiny college degree. Laura, meanwhile, keeps them both in line with a dry wit honed over years of wrangling drivers, routes, and the occasional panicked parent on the phone.

But beneath the laughter is serious work. Their buses clock hundreds of miles a day, some making 240-mile runs between off-campus programs and rural routes. Preventative maintenance is constant, with early mornings spent pumping tires, checking sensors, and making sure every bus is ready to roll. “Electronics are the big thing now,” Darl said. “One bad sensor can shut down the whole bus.”

And when something does go wrong, the pressure is real. “It’s not just fixing somebody’s Buick,” Clint said. “It’s making sure 50 kids get home safely. That responsibility is always on your mind.”

Laura sees the broader picture. Her drivers aren’t just transporting students—they’re often the first adult a child sees in the morning and the last in the afternoon. “It sets the tone for their whole day,” she said. “A smile from a driver can make all the difference.” Drivers also become the district’s eyes and ears, noticing when families move, when living situations change, and when kids might need extra care.

The stories come quickly once the team gets rolling. Buses sold to canoe companies, black ice on shaded back roads, mischievous kindergarteners convincing a substitute driver to take the “long way home,” and snowstorms that once made buses the unofficial plows of Southern Illinois. “Back in the real days, that was the hard job,” Darl grinned. “Now the buses are easier—the kids are tougher.”

Through it all, the camaraderie is unmistakable. They poke fun, swap stories, and finish one another’s sentences. And that chemistry—mixed with decades of expertise and a shared pride in Trico—is what keeps the district moving, quite literally.

Because behind every classroom lesson, every extracurricular practice, and every student success story is a yellow bus that got them there. And behind that bus is a team like Darl, Clint, and Laura—laughing, working, and carrying Trico forward one mile at a time across typical mileage count in excess of 1,200 per day—that’s like driving from Campbell Hill to New Orleans and back every single day, all in the service of kids. And that’s a ride these three—and the entire transportation team—would take, any day.