Prairie South School Division celebrated Education week with a free lunch for bus drivers in Moose Jaw and surrounding areas Friday afternoon.

The annual bus driver celebration receives support from Moose Jaw's Warner Industries, who sell the Thomas line of buses to PSSD.  Greg Donald is in charge of Warner's Saskatchewan sales and said this is the 7th year they've supplied and cooked the hamburger lunch for the drivers.  Donald said "(I) enjoy the business of interacting with people and putting out the best product there is to protect the precious cargo (school children) that we carry".

The PSSD bus drivers enjoyed their appreciation lunch Friday afternoon

Tony Baldwin Director of Education for Prairie South, says approximately 150 drivers between Moose Jaw and Assiniboia, who celebrated the day before, were given a day of praise that they deserve.

"We (in Moose Jaw alone ) drive 34,000 kilometers (KMs) a day with school buses, so they are working hard because it doesn't take long for these guys to rack up some miles."

Baldwin explains that one driver, Ross Whitney who drives for Chaplin school, drives over 210km per day, which has added up to about 1.6 million KMs over his 40-year career.

Whitney started driving a school bus 40 years ago taking over the route for a family member and says the best part about his job is the relationships he gets to enjoy between the children and their parents.

Whitney was honoured with a personalized Saskatchewan Roughriders jersey displaying the number of years of service as well as his name on the back.

Whitney says his biggest obstacle is weather and road conditions but the respect he receives from the children taking the bus everyday makes it all worth it through the years of service he has given. With three years left on his bus driving license he is excited to see if he will still be driving in 2018 but has explained he is going to take it "a year at a time".