Ice road truckers - channel 5 now

Raumarik

Raumarik

Raumarik

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Joined
14 Jul 2003
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Anyone else been watching this, absolutely loving it. Fiancee turned it on because SHE wanted to see it.

Absolute madness that they'd do this, driving a truck in ice is mad, doing it over 350 miles of iced over lakes is utterly insane! :D
 
Its pretty good, ive seen a good 3/4 of this series on the sky doc channels, my mum puts it on!

Cant complain as it is a class programme
 
I really enjoyed this - then again, I have a thing for ice, snow, Canada, big diesel trucks...........

Commercial breaks served a useful purpose too, making tea!
 
This was on all weekend on the history channel a few weeks ago. First time I'd seen it and I ended up watching it for about 4 hours. :o

Amazing what they do, but the big bucks make it all worthwhile.
 
i saw this too! both those young lads looked far too young to be doin a job like that!
anyone know how much they do get?
first time i seen it tonight tho! knew it would be ok when i started daydreaming about how i would handle that job.. bit like when i started to watch deadliest catch!
 
I've been meaning to post about this for ages. It's an excellent series.

They're only allowed to go something like 25kmh on it or it damages the ice and the truck can fall through. The guy last night was saying that north of diavik the lake takes over 3 hours to traverse. 3 hours, in a mahoosive truck, doing 25kmh on 3 ft of ice sounds insane.... and indeed it is!!
 
Yes i love this seen it already on the history channel .

One thing i have noticed on the channel 5 version the voice over isn't the Scottish guy

just is not the same :)
 
justinwilkin said:
Should I have been moar alpha and punched my mum in the ovaries??
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No you should have told her that it's the kind of job you want to do, she would then give you the remote control for fear of you leaving home :)

I wish they would put the temperatures in Celsius so that normal people could understand just how cold it is
Just checked and last night's show had a temp of -39F = -39.444C:eek:
 
What amazes me is the engines have to run 24/7 for the entire 3 odd months they're up there. More than 10-15 mins with the engine off and it will be too cold to start again. -30 to -40C in the daytime, brrrrrr.

Feel sorry for TJ crashing his brand new rig within 5 miles of picking it up.
 
fonzee said:
so these guys do it for a living? not just for the show? couldnt quite make it out in the advertising...
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Yep, from what I gather, they're normal truckers, but for about 3 months of the year the lakes freeze over and the ice roads are made across those lakes, allowing heavy haulage to the mines and so on. During those three months that the roads are open they need to do basically a years supplies for those companies (bhp Billiton, de beers, diavik).

This results in those guys doing almost constant trips between yellowknife and the mines and earning a big payout for each trip they do.
 
The logistics of the whole thing amaze me. I can't remember the exact figure from the first episode but isn't it something like 100,000 tons that need to be transported? Loads vary in terms of priority and the maximum load that can be shifted at any time is determined by the thickness of the ice which changes constantly.... jeez.
 
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