Military Entertainment, Air Force Television, TV, Must See TV - Air Force Times

Warm reception greets TV’s ‘Ice Road Truckers’

Nancy Dubuc, general manager of the History Channel, figured that a series about truckers who make the dangerous, 300-mile journey along an ice road in Canada every winter had promise: A one-time “Modern Marvels” look at it in 2000 was popular.

So she contacted veteran documentary producer Thom Beers, creator of Discovery’s hit “Deadliest Catch,” which is about Alaskan fishermen going after king crab. “Ice Road Truckers” was born.

The June 17 premiere (10 p.m. Eastern time Sundays) drew 3.4 million viewers — 65 percent of them men — making it the highest-rated original program ever on the History Channel. Last week’s episode retained almost 90 percent of the audience.

“Truckers” combines “jeopardy, information and characters, but at the end of the day it comes down to great storytelling,” Dubuc says. “These days it’s not enough to have some expert in a chair in his office telling you the way it is. Viewers want their documentaries told in a different style. They want to be connected. They want to see someone active. They want characters.”

“Truckers” follows six veteran and rookie truckers as they traverse the temporary road during a two-month window before the ice beneath them melts back into a series of lakes in spring. The work is cold, dangerous and exhausting as they pull all-nighters driving through “white-outs,” risking mechanical breakdowns and frostbite in brutally cold conditions.

Their aim in this “dash for the cash” is to make as many trips as possible, delivering 10,000 loads to mines containing about $40 billion worth of diamonds deep in the Northwest Territories. The work pays well: Each trucker stands to make tens of thousands of dollars in just a few months.

But with each trip, there’s the chance that the ice below will crack and drivers will plunge into frigid waters, trapped in the cabs of their trucks. Dozens have been killed over the course of the road’s 80 winters.

Falling through the ice means certain death, says Hugh Rowland, the “polar bear” who owns four rigs. He drives one himself and hires out the others.

“If you’re not paying attention and respecting that ice, you’re not going to make it through the season,” says Rowland, 44, who has been making trips for 20 years. “I don’t know anybody who has gone down and come up. I’ve watched them die. I’ve been there.”

Rowland, who runs an excavating business in the summer, hoped to make 50 trips last winter but only made 37 because his truck broke down three times. Like other ice drivers, he’s into it “for the cash and the adventure. And believe me, there’s something new every day, whether it happens to you or somebody else.”

He said he understands the appeal of the show. “Everyone likes to see something dangerous, but they don’t have the guts to do it themselves. They’d like to be there, but they’d rather it happen to somebody else.”

Beers says he knew the minute he set foot in frigid Yellowknife, Canada, where the trucks set off for the mines, that “Truckers” would work. “It’s minus 40 degrees, and the wind is whipping and sucking the life out of you. At that moment, I thought, ‘This is going to be good TV. Lousy working conditions, but great TV.’ ”

As in “Catch,” Beers looks for “guys working really hard at what they do who don’t know what they’re going to get at the end of the day. I don’t celebrate guys who go to work in a factory and know exactly what their paycheck is going to be at the end of the week.”

Truckers are generally a solitary bunch, riding alone for the most part, and some aren’t very talkative as a result. But “Truckers’ ” six drivers met Beers’ standard.

“When you run into a guy who says, ‘I don’t know the answer to that question and I don’t pretend to know the answer, but I’ll tell you anyway,’ those are the kind of guys that you want,” he says. “They don’t have a clue, but they’re going to tell you anyway.”

Dubuc says she has no doubt that if “The Sopranos” hadn’t become part of TV history, Tony (James Gandolfini), who often tuned in to History Channel documentaries, “would have been a big fan, maybe send some of his buddies up there for a cut of those big diamonds. It would give a double meaning to ‘on ice.’ ”