Toddler’s trash truck tearjerker

Sydney Page

John Coleman, 3, has always had a thing for trucks. When he started noticing a garbage truck drive by his home every Tuesday morning, he’d look out the window or stand in the doorway and watch in awe.

Then one morning, about 10 months ago, John’s mother proposed an idea: “I was like, ‘Hey John, do you want to take him out a snack?’” said Kayla Coleman, who lives in Roanoke, Illinois, a small village in Woodford County. “I wanted my kid to understand what it is to be kind.”

Her toddler seemed overjoyed by the idea.

John waddled outside and handed Craig Hodges, the garbage truck driver, an apple. A friendship was born.

“It’s amazing how he opened up to me that fast,” said Hodges, 39, a driver for GFL Environmental. “I ate the apple, and it was one of the best apples I had.”

In exchange for the fruit, Hodges honked his horn for John.

“John got giddy,” his mother said.

Every Tuesday thereafter, as Hodges would pull up to the Colemans’ house in the morning, he’d find John sitting on the curb with a snack ‒ usually an apple, a banana or a granola bar ‒ in hand. John takes pride in picking Hodges’s snack himself.

“Then he gives me this ginormous hug,” Hodges said. “It’s one of the best feelings in the world because I know it’s genuine; it’s pure.”

They became fast friends, and Hodges began letting John explore the inside of his truck.

“I’ve taught him so much about the truck, he can almost operate it by himself,” Hodges joked. “He sits in it and pretends he’s driving it.”

They spend about 15 minutes together before Hodges has to move on to the next stop on his route. John sometimes cries when he pulls away.

“He’s not ready to not be in the truck anymore,” Coleman said.

For John, Tuesday mornings in the truck are the highlight of his week.

“Most people count down to Fridays,” Coleman said. “We count down to Tuesdays.”

Hodges looks forward to Tuesdays as well.

“I could have the worst Tuesday in the history of Tuesdays, and as soon as I see him out there, he starts getting excited when he sees me, and I do the same thing,” Hodges said. “He honestly brightens my day.”

Hodges said he has a soft spot for John because he had a similar fascination with trucks when he was young.

“What I saw in John was myself when I was a kid. I used to watch the garbage man as well, and I thought maybe I would be a garbage man one day,” Hodges said. “When I saw John, I thought, why not be a positive role model to this kid as he’s growing up?”

Hodges ‒ who has five children of his own ‒ enjoys engaging with young people along his route.

“I’m a super-kid-friendly person,” he said. “When kids see a garbage truck, they get excited and want to hear a horn.”

But no one gets quite as jazzed as John, Hodges said. That’s why, when Coleman told Hodges her son would be starting preschool in August and would therefore not be home on Tuesday mornings, Hodges hatched a plan.

“I didn’t want to break the kid’s heart by telling him: ‘You’ll never see me again,’” Hodges said. “I was like, ‘What can I do?’ That’s when I came up with a route change.”

Hodges consulted with his supervisor, who agreed to let him revise his regular route to stop at the Colemans’ house in the afternoon rather than the morning, so his Tuesdays with John could continue.

Coleman was blown away that Hodges would alter his whole schedule just for John.

“I was so appreciative,” said Coleman, who chronicles her son’s garbage truck adventures on TikTok. The story was first reported by 25News Now.

Hodges said shifting around his schedule for John was worth it.

“I would do it again in a minute,” he said, adding that he would attend John’s fourth birthday party today (Saturday).

Coleman wanted other children in the community to experience the joy her son gets from being in Hodges’s truck, so she organised a free event called Touch a Truck, which is scheduled for tomorrow (Sunday). A variety of trucks ‒ including Hodges’s garbage truck, as well as fire trucks, ambulances, food trucks and even a helicopter ‒ will be parked at Roanoke-Benson High School, where the event will be held.

“Why not let everybody get up onto these trucks just like John does on Tuesdays?” said Coleman, noting that she is also running a food drive for a local food pantry at the event, and animal control is bringing adoptable dogs, too. “Everybody in town is talking about it.”

Coleman hopes that in addition to having fun with trucks, the children who attend the event will learn the same lesson her son did when he brought Hodges his first apple.

“They deserve our appreciation,” she said.