Anyone here a ice road truckee?

Status
Not open for further replies.
Joined
Mar 12, 2015
Messages
27,866
Location
In the shop
Hello and the girlfriend and I were watching "Ice Road Truckers last night. Seems a bit far fetched and obviously "made for tv". Girlfriend got to wondering if any of my friends here at BITOG are or were ice road truckers. Thanks in advance
 
If you have ever been held up by a truck wreck, then you qualify. Ice, snow, or just plain bad driving. Too many trucks, not enough real drivers.
 
Originally Posted By: totegoat
If you have ever been held up by a truck wreck, then you qualify. Ice, snow, or just plain bad driving. Too many trucks, not enough real drivers.


I don't think that qualifies at all...

You need to have driven over a frozen lake, in -40, and North of 55 degrees latitude, to even come close to calling yourself an ice road trucker...
 
Last edited:
Here is the best one ever, many of the early pictures are gone now
frown.gif


http://advrider.com/index.php?threads/yellowknife-ice-trucking.267881/

Sorry about the hours of your life you will lose.

Warning this site more addictive than BOTG!

rod
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: xshoex
I like the ones where their in india or somewhere nuts and drive a semi on a cliff that barely fits the truck
I was a real fan of Lisa Kelly in India until the time her driving partner asked if his black t-shirt made him look fat and she replied: "I think your FAT makes you look fat."
 
I have known drew for years. used to live beside him. rick I have known for years as well. hugh I know a bit but have washed his truck a few times. I drank beers with the producers a couple times. They said lisa didn't even have a license. They used a sub driver and camera tricks to make it look like she drove the whole routes.
 
Originally Posted By: abycat
I have known drew for years. used to live beside him. rick I have known for years as well. hugh I know a bit but have washed his truck a few times. I drank beers with the producers a couple times. They said lisa didn't even have a license. They used a sub driver and camera tricks to make it look like she drove the whole routes.


Very interesting.

I always considered the show, like most "reality" TV, to be a bit of a joke.

I am sure the folks you know are great people, but the lady not having a license just confirms my theory.
 
Originally Posted By: dlundblad
Originally Posted By: abycat
I have known drew for years. used to live beside him. rick I have known for years as well. hugh I know a bit but have washed his truck a few times. I drank beers with the producers a couple times. They said lisa didn't even have a license. They used a sub driver and camera tricks to make it look like she drove the whole routes.


Very interesting.

I always considered the show, like most "reality" TV, to be a bit of a joke.

I am sure the folks you know are great people, but the lady not having a license just confirms my theory.


yeah drew was actually a piece of [censored]. Not a good man. almost burnt his side of our old duplex down. He only made it two seasons. rick was hard into drugs. bit yeah it really was fake reality tv. For the most part. I have drove on ice roads and they are no big deal. The ice is like 12' deep. I took a half ton and did doughnuts on a nice ice road flat spot. was a stupid kid but they over dramatize everything.
 
Never did ice trucking but my dad was in the oil business and we drove a full size diesel in -30 going around 15mph for hours.I value all truck drivers in ANY climate.
 
Those aren't real truckers. Those are drivers. The time Hugh blew a brake can, he didn't even know what to do. Iam telling you driving a Coal truck Triaxle in Pennsylvania hauling out of strip cuts for 13 years. They have nothing on us. Pulling up out of the pit, straight up for about 100' with 25+ ton on your back or sliding down in, driving across a frozen lake is peanuts.
 
Back when I was in HS, my older bro was a trucker in western Canada. He was in his mid 20's and was busting his nuts trying to earn his keep as a drywall delivery trucker. He was always taking silly risks to "make time"...not stopping for bathroom breaks (remember the "big slam" drink bottle openings?), not disclosing his true times in the log book etc. Even at the age of 16-17 I knew what he was doing was wrong.
31.gif


Many times we'd be driving on frozen prairie roads with nothing to keep us company but the strangers on the CB and each others' conversation. There was times we'd have to tarp the load, so he'd get me up on top of the trailer putting corners on the tarp so the load wouldn't be damaged. One particular day it was freezing cold, the engine was idling and the diesel exhaust fumes were blowing right back in my face. I'll never forget the sting and pain of diesel exhaust fumes in my eyes.
37.gif


I recall stories of his fellow drivers losing their loads (or lives) due to bad roads, or simply falling asleep. One particular story involved a fellow driver who had two superbees loaded and was trying to negotiate around an icy highway bend. As he was pulling thru, he thought he was in the clear he noticed the rear trailer was fishtailing. Another time we were called to assist another driver who had just crashed his truck. The driver made it, but the co-driver was asleep in the back and died in the accident.

The whole idea of staying awake just to rush back home for the next load all seemed fickle to me. Risking one's life (and everyone else's on the road), lack of sleep, no consistent lifestyle, terrible diner food etc.

Needless to say, those few trips we took scared me into staying in school so I wouldn't have to work a trashy job like that!
thumbsup2.gif
 
From watching some of it; only one I really kinda like for what he has machine wise is Joey Barnes from Lynn Lake Manitoba. That guy is different
 
Originally Posted By: abycat
Originally Posted By: dlundblad
Originally Posted By: abycat
I have known drew for years. used to live beside him. rick I have known for years as well. hugh I know a bit but have washed his truck a few times. I drank beers with the producers a couple times. They said lisa didn't even have a license. They used a sub driver and camera tricks to make it look like she drove the whole routes.


Very interesting.

I always considered the show, like most "reality" TV, to be a bit of a joke.

I am sure the folks you know are great people, but the lady not having a license just confirms my theory.


yeah drew was actually a piece of [censored]. Not a good man. almost burnt his side of our old duplex down. He only made it two seasons. rick was hard into drugs. bit yeah it really was fake reality tv. For the most part. I have drove on ice roads and they are no big deal. The ice is like 12' deep. I took a half ton and did doughnuts on a nice ice road flat spot. was a stupid kid but they over dramatize everything.


Twelve feet deep?

Better check this out!

https://www.uhaul.com/SuperGraphics/171/...n-The-Ice-Roads



Uhaul Home
SuperGraphics
About
Feedback

The
graphic
The Freezing
Point
Journey On The Ice
Roads
Diamond
Rush
Northern
Lights
The Polar
Zone
Acknowledgement &
Reference
Related

Links

Journey On The Ice Roads

Can you imagine driving a 40-ton (38 metric ton) truck over a lake – not on a bridge, but over just a layer of ice? People do just that in some of the coldest, iciest parts of the world. But the ice they drive on is special ice – safely engineered to hold vehicles carrying heavy loads. To learn more about the history of the roads, where they are located, how they are built, who uses them and why, travel along the ice roads with us now.
North by Northwest
Where Are The Ice Roads?

Traveling over temporary roads made of ice is often necessary in remote areas where there are few permanent roads or no roads at all. They are located in parts of the world where there is plenty of ice and no shortage of cold weather to keep the ice from melting for long periods of time. The Northwest Territories of Canada in North America is located in a polar zone which makes it a perfect place to build ice roads.

The Canadian tundra is one location where there are not many permanent roads. Very few people live in these areas. The land is covered with large lakes in the warmer months. These lakes are covered with ice in the colder months. It would be very expensive to build permanent roads and bridges in these remote areas. Even if they were built, it would be almost impossible to keep them clear of snow and passable in the winter. So, in these northern areas, people cleverly travel over the ice that covers the land much of the year instead of building costly roads which could be used only rarely.

One of the main cities in the Northwest Territories is Yellowknife. Yellowknife is the starting point for many of the ice roads that are built every winter to the outer areas of the Northwest Territories. Wait a minute...built every winter? If you wonder why they must be built every winter you must first know that the ice roads melt away every spring!
Cold As Ice
How Are The Ice Roads Built?

The ice roads are also called winter roads. That's because they simply do not exist during the warmer months of the year. Here's how the building process starts: around mid-November every winter, the temperature drops, the lakes freeze over, the marshy areas turn solid and the land surface is frozen.

The ice roads are built over the lakes and the land between the lakes. Land between lakes is known as portage. Around late December, the ice on a lake is 12” (30 centimeters) thick. At this point, snowplows clear the snow off the ice to make the ice turn thicker, faster. You might think the snow helps the ice get thicker, but the opposite is true. Snow covering the ice layer acts as an insulator. If the snow is plowed off, the ice is directly exposed to subfreezing air. In this area, temperatures drop to lows such as 40° below zero! (The –40° temperature is the only point at which the Farenheit and Celsius scales register the same.)

After the ice is plowed across a lake, the ice gets much thicker than the surrounding lake ice, forming the start of an ice road. During construction, ice thickness is measured every day. One way it is measured is by drilling holes through the ice to measure its depth. Another way to measure its thickness, is by using high-tech ground-penetrating radar to profile (or “read”) the ice sheet. Often maintenance crews use augers to drill through the ice to obtain water to use to improve the thickening process.

Once the ice thickens to 27”- 28” (.7 meters) over the entire road, trucks with very light loads are allowed to cross. Once the ice reaches 41”- 42” (1 meter) thick along the entire road, it is thick enough for a Super B tanker fully loaded with up to 50,000 liters of fuel to drive across. (A Super B is a tractor hauling two tanks of fuel and weighing approximately 42 tons or 38 metric tons.) At this point, ice roads are officially open for the winter season. Depending on the region and seasonal temperatures, ice roads can last anywhere from a few weeks to several months.





Looks like 3 to 3 1/2 feet is the go to thickness.
 
Thickness of ice at the North Pole is at 6 to 10 feet, winter freeze is normally at 3 feet.

North Pole
See also: Arctic sea ice decline

Earth's North Pole is covered by floating pack ice (sea ice) over the Arctic Ocean. Portions of the ice that do not melt seasonally can get very thick, up to 3–4 meters thick over large areas, with ridges up to 20 meters thick. One-year ice is usually about 1 meter thick. The area covered by sea ice ranges between 9 and 12 million km². In addition, the Greenland ice sheet covers about 1.71 million km² and contains about 2.6 million km³ of ice. When the ice breaks off (calves) it forms icebergs scattered around the northern Atlantic.[2]
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top