Ice Road Truckers

Lisa: Ready, three, two, one.

***

Narrator: This season...

Here we go, hang on.

Narrator: on "Ice Road Truckers"...

- We (bleep) near lost her there, buddy.

Narrator: Drivers battle the most challenging conditions...

Whoa!

Narrator: they've ever faced.

- I didn't (bleep) make it again.

Narrator: From Arctic blasts...

Steph: Oh my God. Oh my God.

Narrator: To overnight heat waves...

Art: The weather's been up and down, up and down, up and down.

This is like spring, b'y.

Narrator: Turbulent weather has made the roads unstable...

Alex: Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!

Narrator: Unpredictable...

Steph: Oh!

Narrator: and deadly.

Alex: whoa!

***

Narrator: A back log of supplies...

Lisa: All these loads are all piled up

and need to go as soon as possible.

Narrator: Has left the remote communities of the north

in dire need...

Todd: This is not gonna be easy.

Narrator: And the trucking community

will have to get the job done...

Todd: Every time I come around a corner I think of Darrell.

***

Narrator: without an ice road legend.

Lisa: Me and Darrell were always chaos and destruction.

My life is just chaos now.

Narrator: From a brave lone wolf

to mighty Polar Industries...

Mark: It's now or never. We gotta get this done.

Alex: No, no, no.

Narrator: It's time...

Art: Come on, come on, come on!

Narrator: to hammer down.

Ahhhh!

***

***

Darrell: The life of a trucker is pretty hard.

It can be awful lonely.

You can be on the road for a long time.

It can ruin relationships,

it can turn your life upside down.

But...

you throw me a 100 miles of hell

and I'll take your load to the other end

because I live for the challenge

knowing that not everybody can do this.

I love that feeling of living on the edge.

You come into this world with nothing

the only thing you leave with is your memories.

I will remember this forever.

Narrator: For the last two years

unseasonably warm temperatures have devastated

Canada's winter roads.

Cutting the trucking season short...

and leaving millions of dollars worth of hauls undelivered.

Hello?

Narrator: But for Lisa Kelly...

Yeah, that's us.

Narrator: it's not the only hardship she's facing.

Thank you.

It was, yeah, it was a terrible loss for all of us.

Narrator: Over the summer Lisa's mentor

and business partner, Darrell Ward,

was killed in a plane crash.

Lisa: It just doesn't seem real.

I don't know if I've reacted to it yet.

So I'm still kind of waiting for it to like

settle in and hit.

It's gonna be weird.

I understand that you need it right away.

Yeah, still gonna give her a try, you betcha.

Just to let you know I haven't forgot about you.

I am by myself this year and there is a lot of loads

to play catch up over it, so I'm gonna do my best

to get as many as I can.

I'll just try to run this business without Darrell

and if it doesn't work out...

I don't really have a backup plan I guess.

I'll do my best.

All right, thanks. Bye.

I know I can drive truck,

but what I've never done is like be my own boss.

I've always had like a mentor or somebody to lead me around.

So I don't know if I can do it myself.

I'm hooking up to my first load.

I'm headed to Tadoule Lake today.

So it's time to get down to work.

Narrator: For her first haul of the season

Lisa's heading 900 miles north

to the isolated community of Tadoule lake

delivering a load of construction supplies

that was due last season.

Lisa: Ba-da-boom. Just hit the winter road.

This is my first time on this road going to Tadoule Lake

so that's kind of a little nerve racking.

I've driven the ice roads, I've driven over lakes,

but the scary part now is being by myself.

Whoa!

All these loads are now like on my back.

I just need to do the best that I can

and try to just wing it.

Fake it till you make it.

Narrator: While Lisa charges on

and tries to keep her company afloat...

back in Winnipeg...

Well, here we go.

Narrator: Super trucker, Todd Dewey,

is once again Polar's top dog.

- There're a lot of loads this year to go out.

We got a lot of responsibility riding

on our shoulders this year.

Narrator: But Todd's also feeling the effects

of a very tough off season.

Todd: When it gets time to do the ice roads

it's always for me, it's always an emotional time of year.

This year's a little but more emotional than, than normal.

Me and Darrell Ward had become great friends.

And to get that call this year that uh,

you know he was killed, it was, it was uh,

it was devastating.

Huge tragedy for me.

Almost couldn't process that one.

And then right after Darrell died I got another phone call

one that I would have never thought in a million years

I would have ever got was um,

my cousin Gabe Reigart,

was killed in an automotive accident.

Me and Gabe, it's almost as close as you can be

to be as brothers.

I think about what his kids have gone through

and his wife has gone through is, is...

probably one of the most heart-breaking things

that anybody can go through.

That's part of why it made it so hard for me

to leave my family this year

to come up here to do this cause my wife,

she walked over and grabbed me

and made me look her in the eyes

and said, "please come home.

We can't take another loss this year."

This load is going to a little place called Oxford House.

So here we go. It's time to rock and roll.

Let's get out of here.

***

Narrator: Todd's first run puts him

on the treacherous 600 mile long road

from Winnipeg to the distant community of Oxford House.

And he'll be hauling a front loader on a low boy.

Geez... Christmas...

Narrator: A notorious hazardous trailer

that rides just inches from the ground.

Todd: You know they put a lot of trust in me

to make sure I get this loader up here and get it delivered.

You know you don't see a lot of low decks up on these ice roads

because of how bumpy they are

and it's beginning of the season

so you just don't know what to expect.

It can't go very fast.

It just it bounces so hard,

bottoms out so hard you just don't want to break anything.

Just like that. You feel that?

It's not worth taking a chance,

a guys just gotta slow down a little bit,

grab a gear lower.

Narrator: Slowing down is much safer when driving a low boy.

- Holy smokes. Look at that freakin' hill.

Narrator: But there's a need for speed

if you want to make your way up the steeper grades.

Now that is a hill, buddy.

Steep and slippery.

***

Come on girl, come on girl.

Now we're just spinning out.

I'm gonna have to back up and get a big run at this hill

if I'm even gonna have a chance to make it.

I really need to pay attention to where the bumps are.

As soon as we get to the right bump

it just bottoms right out on the rails of the low bed.

Narrator: Just hours into his first trip,

Todd is confronted with a dangerous dilemma.

Todd can't get over the hill

without hammering down at a high speed,

but if the low bed trailer bottoms out at any point

it could break apart and violently crash.

***

- Let's get up this f'in hill now.

Here we go, hang on.

It's now or never.

***

Hang on, this is a long hill.

So I'm just gonna let a little bit of speed,