''Ice Road Truckers'' (commercially abbreviated ''IRT'') is a

reality Reality is the sum or aggregate of all that is real or existent within a system, as opposed to that which is only imaginary. The term is also used to refer to the ontological status of things, indicating their existence. In physical terms, re ...

television series A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed be ...

that premiered on

History Channel History (formerly The History Channel from January 1, 1995 to February 15, 2008, stylized as HISTORY) is an American pay television network and flagship channel owned by A&E Networks, a joint venture between Hearst Communications and the Disney ...

, on June 17, 2007. It features the activities of drivers who operate trucks on seasonal routes crossing frozen lakes and rivers, in remote

Arctic The Arctic ( or ) is a polar regions of Earth, polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada (Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm (Greenla ...

territories in Canada and

Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U ...

. Seasons three to six also featured Alaska's improved but still remote

Dalton Highway The James W. Dalton Highway, usually referred to as the Dalton Highway (and signed as Alaska Route 11), is a road in Alaska. It begins at the Elliott Highway, north of Fairbanks, and ends at Deadhorse (an unincorporated community within the ...

, which is mainly snow-covered solid ground. The newest seasons are mainly focused on

Manitoba Manitoba ( ) is a Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Canada at the Centre of Canada, longitudinal centre of the country. It is Canada's Population of Canada by province and territory, fifth-most populous province, with a population o ...

's winter roads. The series' 11th season finished airing on November 9, 2017.

History

In 2000, History aired a 46-minute episode titled "Ice Road Truckers" as part of the ''Suicide Missions'' (later ''Dangerous Missions'') series. Based on

Edith Iglauer Edith Iglauer Daly (formerly Hamburger; March 10, 1917 – February 13, 2019) was an American writer who wrote several nonfiction books, including ''The New People: The Eskimo's Journey Into Our Time'' (1966); ''Denison's Ice Road'' (1974), a prof ...

's book '' Denison's Ice Road'', the episode details the treacherous job of driving trucks over frozen lakes, also known as

ice road An ice road or ice bridge is a human-made structure that runs on a frozen water surface (a river, a lake or a sea water expanse).Masterson, D. and Løset, S., 2011, ISO 19906: Bearing capacity of ice and ice roads, Proceedings of the 21st Inte ...

s, in Canada's

Northwest Territories The Northwest Territories (abbreviated ''NT'' or ''NWT''; french: Territoires du Nord-Ouest, formerly ''North-Western Territory'' and ''North-West Territories'' and namely shortened as ''Northwest Territory'') is a federal territory of Canada. ...

. After 2000, reruns of the documentary were aired as an episode of the series ''

Modern Marvels ''Modern Marvels'' is an American worldwide television series that formerly aired on the History Channel and is currently shown on Story Television. The program focuses on how technologies affect and are used in modern society. It is History's ...

'', instead. Under this banner, the ''Ice Road Truckers'' show garnered very good ratings. In 2006, the History Channel hired

Thom Beers Thom Beers (born July 20, 1952 in Batavia, New York) is an American television producer and narrator/voice-over artist. Career Beers, a former producer and executive with Turner Broadcasting System, Turner Broadcasting and Paramount Syndicated T ...

, owner of Original Productions and executive producer of ''

Deadliest Catch ''Deadliest Catch'' is a Reality television, reality television series that premiered on the Discovery Channel on April 12, 2005. The show follows Crab fisheries, crab fishermen aboard fishing vessels in the Bering Sea during the Alaskan king crab ...

'', to create a series based on the ''Ice Road'' book. Shot in

high-definition video High-definition video (HD video) is video of higher resolution and quality than standard-definition. While there is no standardized meaning for ''high-definition'', generally any video image with considerably more than 480 vertical scan lines ...

(although the season ended before History HD was launched in the US), the show "charts two months in the lives of six extraordinary men who haul vital supplies to diamond mines and other remote locations over frozen lakes that double as roads".

Airings

Season one of ''Ice Road Truckers'' was shown on the British national commercial channel Channel Five in February/March 2008. In Australia, it aired on

Austar Austar was an Australian telecommunications company. Its main business activity was subscription television but it has also been involved with internet access and mobile phones. It was founded in 1995 under the name Community Entertainment Tele ...

and

Foxtel Foxtel is an Australian pay television company—operating in cable television, direct broadcast satellite television, and IPTV streaming services. It was formed in April 2018, superseding an earlier company from 1995. The service was establi ...

in early 2008, and from June 18 it also began being shown on

Network Ten Network 10 (commonly known as Ten Network, Channel 10 or simply 10) is an Australian commercial television network owned by Ten Network Holdings, a division of the Paramount Networks UK & Australia subsidiary of Paramount Global. One of fiv ...

. In autumn 2008 season one aired on

RTL 7 RTL 7 is a Dutch free-to-cable television channel that was launched as ''Veronica'' on 1 September 1995. RTL 7 is RTL Nederland's "men's channel" with action films, reality television about crime and professions, soccer, motorsport and tal ...

in the Netherlands. In Italy. the first season premiered on History Channel on January 7, 2010 as "" ('Heroes of the ice'). The second season premiered on June 8, 2008, in the US; October 9, 2008 on History in the UK and in Australia; November 12, 2008, in New Zealand; and January 7, 2009, on Channel 5 in the UK. The first season was not aired in Canada until March 4, 2009, on

History Television The History Channel (also known as History) is a Canadian English language specialty channel that primarily broadcast programming related to history and historical fiction. It is owned by Corus Entertainment, with the History branding used under ...

. The third season premiered on May 31, 2009, in the US; September 10 in the UK. Channel Five debuted series 3 on January 5, 2010.

Reception

The series' premiere was seen by 3.4 million viewers, to become the most-watched original telecast in the History Channel's 12-year history at that time. Among critics, Adam Buckman of the ''

New York Post The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com. It was established ...

'' said, "Everything about 'Ice Road Truckers' is astonishing".

Virginia Heffernan Virginia Heffernan (born August 8, 1969) is an American journalist and cultural critic. Since 2015, she has been a political columnist at the ''Los Angeles Times'' and a cultural columnist at ''Wired (magazine), Wired''. From 2003 to 2011, she w ...

of ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'' said, "Watching these guys ... make their runs, it’s hard not to share in their cold, fatigue and horrible highway hypnosis, that existential recognition behind the wheel late at night that the pull of sleep and the pull of death are one and the same. ... gets right exactly what ''

'' got right, namely that the leave-nothing-but-your-footprints, green kind of eco-travelers are too mellow and conscientious to be interesting to watch. Instead, the burly, bearded, swearing men (and women) who blow methyl hydrate into their own transmissions and welcome storms as breaks from boredom ... are much better television." During 2007 the series was shown in the United Kingdom, Australia and various countries in Africa. The show opening features a truck falling through the ice. While real accidents with fatal outcomes might be mentioned, the show has never featured them; the show opening is a miniature model filmed inside a studio. A season-one rumor that the sequence was staged using a real truck and dynamite caused discontent among the drivers.Kaplan, Don, "BACK ON THE 'ICE ROAD'"
''

'', April 2, 2008

Episodes

Truckers

''IRT: Deadliest Roads''

Season one: Himalayas

On October 3, 2010, a spinoff series, titled ''IRT: Deadliest Roads'', premiered immediately after the season-four finale. Rick Yemm, Alex Debogorski, and Lisa Kelly traveled to India and put their driving skills to the test on the narrow, treacherous mountain roads that lead from

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

Shimla Shimla (; ; also known as Simla, the official name until 1972) is the capital and the largest city of the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh. In 1864, Shimla was declared as the summer capital of British India. After independence, ...

, then up to the Karchan and Kuppa hydroelectric dam construction sites in the

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 10 ...

. Debogorski quit in the first episode due to fear of angry mobs if he were involved in an accident, and was replaced by Alabama trucker Dave Redmon (who has since been featured in season five of ''Ice Road Truckers''). As the season continued, the drivers were dispatched to carry supplies over the stormy

Rohtang Pass Rohtang Pass (Rohtang , lit: རོ་ (Ro)- corpse(s), ཐང་། (thang)- plain/field Polgreen, Lydia. ''New York Times''. Accessed 31 July 2010.) is a high mountain pass (elevation ) on the eastern end of the Pir Panjal Range of the Hima ...

to the town of Keylong, which had been cut off for months due to the bad weather. The season finale aired on December 5, 2010, with the truckers attempting to deliver loads of jet fuel for helicopter crews who were working to rescue people stranded in the mountains by the storms. Yemm and Redmon turned back, deciding that the conditions were too hazardous for the volatile cargo; the next day, Kelly hauled the entire shipment herself and delivered it to the crews, becoming the only North American trucker to complete the entire season. The roads were often hacked out of vertical cliffs like a tunnel with one side open to the air, with rock overhangs overhead and drops of several hundred feet below. One part of the road was called "the Freefall Freeway". * In episode five: "Crumbling Roads", Kelly and Yemm delivered two images (one each, well- packed with

sandbag A sandbag or dirtbag is a bag or sack made of hessian (burlap), polypropylene or other sturdy materials that is filled with sand or soil and used for such purposes as flood control, military fortification in trenches and bunkers, shielding gl ...

s, sand, and straw) of the goddess

Kali Kali (; sa, काली, ), also referred to as Mahakali, Bhadrakali, and Kalika ( sa, कालिका), is a Hindu goddess who is considered to be the goddess of ultimate power, time, destruction and change in Shaktism. In this tra ...

(shown as treading on her husband

Shiva Shiva (; sa, शिव, lit=The Auspicious One, Śiva ), also known as Mahadeva (; Help:IPA/Sanskrit, ɐɦaːd̪eːʋɐ, or Hara, is one of the Hindu deities, principal deities of Hinduism. He is the Supreme Being in Shaivism, one o ...

) along a risky mountain road hacked out of cliffsides to a temple at a town called

Kalpa, Himachal Pradesh Kalpa is a small village in the Sutlej river valley, above Reckong Peo in the Kinnaur district of Himachal Pradesh, Northern India, in the Indian Himalaya. The region is inhabited by the Kinnauri people and is known for its apple orchards, as ...

. * In episode six: "Thin Air", they struggled with a worse road and altitude hypoxia on the

, and one of them delivered an image of

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, most commonly referred to as the Buddha, was a wandering ascetic and religious teacher who lived in South Asia during the 6th or 5th century BCE and founded Buddhism. According to Buddhist tradition, he was born in L ...

and some

Buddhist scriptures Buddhist texts are those religious texts which belong to the Buddhist tradition. The earliest Buddhist texts were not committed to writing until some centuries after the death of Gautama Buddha. The oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts a ...

to a Tibetan-type

Buddhist monastery Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

in the mountains. Early promotional spots for the series listed the title as ''IRT: Himalayas''.

Season two: South America

The second season of ''IRT: Deadliest Roads'' premiered on September 25, 2011. Six North American drivers are sent to

Bolivia , image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg , flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center , flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...

to haul cargo along the

Yungas Road The Yungas Road is a cycle route about 60 km long that links the city of La Paz and the Yungas region of Bolivia. It draws about 25,000 tourists per year and is a major La Paz tourist attraction. Many tour operators cater to downhill moun ...

, notorious for its extreme hazards. The drivers work in pairs – Hugh Rowland and Rick Yemm, Lisa Kelly and Dave Redmon, and newcomers Timothy R. Zickuhr and Augustin "Tino" Rodriguez. Redmon and Yemm quit in episode two; Rowland continues driving alone, while Texas trucker G.W. Boles arrives to ride with Kelly in episode four. Starting with episode eight, the truckers relocate to

Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = National seal , national_motto = "Firm and Happy f ...

and begin transporting loads to sites high in the

Andes The Andes, Andes Mountains or Andean Mountains (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long, wide (widest between 18°S – 20°S ...

mountain range. In episode six, Kelly and Boles transport 32 breeding

llama The llama (; ) (''Lama glama'') is a domesticated South American camelid, widely used as a meat and pack animal by Andean cultures since the Pre-Columbian era. Llamas are social animals and live with others as a herd. Their wool is soft ...

s across the

Salar de Uyuni Salar de Uyuni (or "Salar de Tunupa") is the world's largest salt flat, or playa, at over in area. It is in the Daniel Campos Province in Potosí in southwest Bolivia, near the crest of the Andes at an elevation of above sea level. The Sala ...

, the world's biggest salt flat, above sea level. On the way, their truck's radiator begins to leak; after they mend it, they must empty all their drinking water into the radiator to replace the loss. Abundant

lithium Lithium (from el, λίθος, lithos, lit=stone) is a chemical element with the symbol Li and atomic number 3. It is a soft, silvery-white alkali metal. Under standard conditions, it is the least dense metal and the least dense soli ...

deposits cause their magnetic

compass A compass is a device that shows the cardinal directions used for navigation and geographic orientation. It commonly consists of a magnetized needle or other element, such as a compass card or compass rose, which can pivot to align itself with ...

es to read incorrectly, and for a time, their

global positioning system The Global Positioning System (GPS), originally Navstar GPS, is a satellite-based radionavigation system owned by the United States government and operated by the United States Space Force. It is one of the global navigation satellite ...

malfunctions. In February 2015, Tim Zickuhr pleaded guilty to kidnapping and extortion, then was sentenced to a maximum of 15 years' prison. Zickuhr's current incarceration and/or parole status are uncertain.

Feature film

In 2008,

20th Century Fox 20th Century Studios, Inc. (previously known as 20th Century Fox) is an American film production company headquartered at the Fox Studio Lot in the Century City area of Los Angeles. As of 2019, it serves as a film production arm of Walt Disn ...

acquired rights from the History Channel to create a scripted, theatrical action film based on the series.Fleming, Michael. "Fox drives 'Truckers' to bigscreen"
''

Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...

''. February 12, 2008

References

External links

Official website, History Channel USA

Official website, History Channel UK

Official website, History Channel Canada

Official website, Channel 5 UK
* (2000

documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a historical record". Bill Nichols has characterized the documentary in te ...