[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/ice_road_truckers-show_6568.jpg]]

->''"These are the truckers who make their living on thin ice."''
-->-- '''Thom Beers'''

In 1999, Creator/TheHistoryChannel aired a 46-minute episode titled "Ice Road Truckers" as part of the Suicide Missions series. Based on the book ''Denison's Ice Road'' by Edith Iglauer, the episode detailed the treacherous job of driving trucks over frozen lakes, also known as ice roads, in Canada's Northwest Territories. After 2000, reruns of the documentary were aired as an episode of the series ''Series/ModernMarvels'' instead. Under this banner, the Ice Road Truckers show garnered very good ratings.

In 2006, The History Channel hired Thom Beers, owner of Original Productions and executive producer of ''Series/DeadliestCatch'', to create a series based on the Ice Road by Beers. Shot in high definition (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". During the finale of the show's first season of 10 episodes, The History Channel aired a promo for season 2 which began airing on June 8, 2008. Season 1 of ''Ice Road Truckers'' was shown on the British national commercial Creator/Channel5 in February/March 2008. In Australia it aired on Austar and Foxtel in early 2008 and from June 18 it also began being shown on Network Ten. In autumn 2008 season one aired on RTL 7 in The Netherlands. During the late summer of 2015, Creator/TheHistoryChannel began broadcasting season 9, driving across North Central Canada's frozen roads and frozen over lakes and rivers.

Season 10 premiered on The History Channel on Thursday, August 4th, 2016.

{{Spinoff}} series ''IRT: Deadliest Roads'' began airing in October 2010. The first season sent three veteran Ice Road Truckers, and one new trucker from Alabama, to India to deal with treacherously steep, narrow, and crowded roads in the Himalayas. A second season premiered in September 2011, this time sending six North American truckers to South America. They hauled freight along the hazardous Yungas Road (also known as ''El Camino de la Muerte'', "The Death Road") in Bolivia, then relocated to Peru to bring loads to sites high in the Andes mountain range.

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!!Tropes:

* AdBreakDoubleTake: Go on, try to find a commercial break after which the same footage of our heroes in danger is ''not'' rewound several seconds. The show would probably run several minutes short each week without this. (Which must be very distracting on DVD.)
* [[TheAllegedCar The Alleged Truck]]: The Indian Tata 1613s used in ''IRT:Deadliest Roads''.
* ArtifactTitle: The overseas branches of the franchise still use the "IRT" abbreviation in their titles, despite their driving-hazards having little to nothing to do with ice.
* BerserkButton:
** Ray gets a lot of opportunities to express his frustration, but is really driven over the edge at one point when a breakdown happens out on the tundra, in the middle of the night after an already long day, the problem takes him hours to diagnose and fix, and the camera just keeps rolling. Ray takes out his frustrations on the cameraman after expressing incredulity at his relentlessness.
** Rick's incredulous response to the kamikaze drivers in India certainly qualifies. Come to think of it, Rick is kind of a hothead in general.
** Also in India, the explosive reactions of both Rick and Dave to a mob of Indians trying to forcibly enter Lisa's truck would definitely count, almost resulting in the two truckers coming to blows with the crowd until an English-speaking Indian stepped in to defuse the situation.
* BreakOutTheMuseumPiece: In season 7, Joey Barnes -- the self-styled "King of Obsolete" -- uses vintage trucks to make equipment delivery/pickup runs.
* ButtMonkey: Ray probably suffers from more breakdowns and inconvenient mechanical problems than any other driver. Arguably, he brings a lot of them upon himself by taking shortcuts and pushing himself too hard, but there's a fair amount of MurphysLaw involved as well.
** Rick gets his fair share of this in Season 5. What can go wrong, will usually go wrong for Rick first.
** Gets a lot worse in Season 6. Rick's truck shows evidence of a deer mouse infestation and must be thoroughly cleaned and decontaminated, and he has contracted an illness from their droppings that may or may not be hantavirus. [[spoiler:It isn't, but it does put him out of commission for several days.]]
** In Season 7, Art Burke falls into this role while working for Hugh at VP Express, to the point that he quits and goes to work for its rival, Polar Industries. He eventually gets the last laugh by bringing in the load that gives Polar the edge over VP in the end-of-season load count.
* CaptainObvious: Lisa Kelly is interviewed on [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYnwAB4DnqM Late Night with David Letterman]]. Dave asks her a lot of simple questions, presumably to help the audience understand what her job is like. Lisa tries to play along but can't hide the fact that she thinks these are pretty dumb questions. HilarityEnsues.
* {{Catchphrase}}:
-->'''Alex''': Holy mackerel!
-->'''Alex''': Hang on to your socks!
* ChildHater: Lisa Kelly by her own admission.
* ChuckCunninghamSyndrome: Some of the Alaskan drivers will disappear from the cast from one season to the next without explanation, despite the show following the same trucking company on the same roads. Most notable in Season 6 when Lisa Kelly was surprisingly absent and Jack Jessee [[TheBusCameBack returned after being absent in Season 5]]. It's possible that some of these drivers are still working for Carlile, but they didn't agree to be on the show that year or History didn't get enough interesting footage of them.
* CliffhangerCopout: While there's a lot of genuine danger for our truckers to encounter, the show has a habit of making minor near-misses and other oncoming obstacles look like a major threat so that they can be used as act breaks. Five to ten seconds after the commercial break, it'll usually end up being nothing to worry about.
* ClimbingTheCliffsOfInsanity: The entire spinoff series, ''Deadliest Roads'', is based off of this trope.
* ClusterFBomb: Rick Yemm's response to anything and everything he encounters anywhere ever.
** Dave Redmon's curse-per-minute ratio seems to have gone up significantly since his move to Alaska.
** Hugh swears like a sailor, regardless of his mood.
* DeadpanSnarker: Most of the truckers possess this trope in spades.
* DrivesLikeCrazy: Happens sometimes when a rookie driver gets impatient on the ice roads and decides to pass a veteran driver, on a curvy two-lane road, in dangerous conditions, who is likely driving slow for a very good reason.
** Exaggerated by the locals in the ''Deadliest Roads'' spinoff.
* DrivingStick:
** Season three has two of the Canadian drivers from previous seasons come to Alaska to drive on the Dalton Highway, aka North Slope Haul Road in Alaska. One of them has driven trucks most his life but the truck he is driving has an unfamiliar transmission setup and in the beginning he keeps shifting to the wrong gear. Considering they are driving over steep hills and along winding mountain roads covered in ice, shifting to the wrong gear could cause the truck to lose traction and go off the road. If that happens in the wrong spot, it can be deadly.
** Big-rig transmissions in general are the Big Boss level compared to the typical 5 speed manual transmission in a car or pickup. Most big-rigs have anywhere from 15-18 forward gears and 1-3 reverse gears.
** Lisa struggles with shifting to 2nd gear when driving a Tata truck in the Himalayan roads in ''Deadliest Roads''. It's stated in the narration that 1-2 is a dogleg shift on these, with the gear positions reversed from where you'd find them on a car 5-speed manual.
** In Season 7, her old wrist fracture (from motocross racing) flares up, making the task of changing gears on an uphill stretch ''extremely'' painful.
* FriendlyEnemies: Hugh and Alex, the two Canadian drivers who stayed with the show after its move to Alaska, constantly rib each other and have pissing matches on the road to see who can reach their destination first, who can beat the other in the load count, etc. This is mostly instigated by Hugh; Alex is generally a nice guy, but seems to enjoy playing along. Alex topped Hugh's end-of-season load count for the first time in Season 5.
** Subverted in Season 7, when Hugh sets up his own trucking company in Manitoba to compete with his old boss - who has hired Alex, Darrell, and Lisa.
** And undone in Season 8, when Alex switches sides to work for Hugh instead.
* GallowsHumor: The drivers sometimes use this as a coping mechanism when dealing with the dangerous ice crossings. Often this is done in response to questions asked by the camera crew about what will happen if the ice cracks, and the dark humor is intended to underscore the fact that it can happen suddenly and there is very little chance of survival.
* GoodSamaritan: Alex excels at this, sometimes risking delivering his loads late to help fellow truckers in distress, or in one case, a man who was severely injured in a car crash. Most of the truckers seem to abide by a code of helping the other guy when he's in trouble, but Alex is seen doing it most often.
** Season 6: Austin Wheeler gets his chance to help out a number of times, but one attempt backfires and leaves him stuck in a ditch overnight.
* HardTruckin: The show is about the dangers of ice trucking. What the drivers face as they drive on lakes that double as roads across Canada and Alaska. The spin-off series ''IRT: Deadliest Roads'' has drivers braving more narrow and treacherous roads and elements in the Himalayas and in South America.
* ImNotHereToMakeFriends: "I'm here to make money." Hugh likes to remind the audience of this roughly once per episode.
** Dave Redmon (season 5) and Ronald "Porkchop" Mangum (season 6) also display this attitude fairly frequently.
* ImprobableInfantSurvival: Of the canine variety. Lisa adopts a stray dog during her stint in India. This pretty much guarantees that all threats of her truck going over a cliff are greatly exaggerated.
* JammedSeatbelts: It's specifically noted that when driving big rigs over frozen lakes and rivers, drivers remove their seatbelts to bail more quickly. With a 15-20 km/h speed limit, injuries due to impacts aren't really a concern anyway. Not to mention there is very little to run into on a frozen lake.
** At times in Season 6, Alex is so wary of the river ice under his wheels that he drives part of the way with his door open, ready to jump out if he starts to break through. [[spoiler:He doesn't.]]
** During Season 9, Todd Dewey has to haul a 130,000-pound crane, the heaviest load he's ever moved. Not only does he make the final ice crossing with the door open, he practically stands in the doorway so he can bail out if anything goes wrong. [[spoiler:Nothing does.]]
* {{Jerkass}}: Hugh seems to take special delight in being one of these. He might be closer to JerkWithAHeartOfGold, as he's generally less abrasive in person (though still somewhat obnoxious and not particularly helpful) than he is when communicating with other drivers over the radio.
* KillItWithFire: Hugh nearly falls victim to this in the Season 2 finale of ''Deadliest Roads''. Hauling a load of fireworks for a village festival, he finds brush fires set in the middle of the road and drives straight through them. A few embers get sucked into his air intake, but he keeps them from destroying the whole truck by revving his engine until the increased air flow puts them out.
* NiceJobBreakingItHero: Happens on occasion when a trucker gets a bit careless and ends up damaging his/her load as a result. Most prominent in Season 2 of ''Deadliest Roads'', when Lisa/G.W. and Tino/Tim had to take several large dinosaur models to a children's museum. Both loads arrived with serious damage due to G.W.'s maneuvering error on a bridge and Tino/Tim banging into Hugh as they raced toward their destination. Hugh was the only one to deliver his load (ceramic pots and statues) intact that day.
* NoFourthWall: While it's obvious that participants in a reality show are aware of the show, it was still amusing to discover that Lisa owned the DVD set of the show's previous season, and planned on watching it while waiting out several days of bad weather in Prudhoe Bay, less for entertainment and more to learn from her mistakes.
* NoOSHACompliance: While the main show demonstrates rigorous safety measures taken on both the Alaskan and Canadian roads, the ''Deadliest Roads'' spinoff takes place almost entirely on roads with one lane, no guardrails, and suicidal oncoming traffic. It doesn't help that several sections of the road are either landslide-prone or ''visibly crumbling''. [[BreadEggsBreadedEggs Or both]].
* OlderThanTheyLook: Austin in Season 6. He's 23, with a face that makes him look about 16. The other drivers give him a lot of guff over this at first, but he gets on better terms with them as the season goes on. Before coming up to Faribanks, he spent time moving heavy loads in southern Alaska.
* OnceAnEpisode:
** "You can't stop the Chop" (Ronald "Porkchop" Mangum, season 6). [[spoiler:He did eventually get stopped when the Carlile bosses fired him at the end of the season.]]
** Many of the episodes that feature Alex Debogorski show him praying before or during a run.
* PapaWolf: Rick and Dave almost come to blows with a mob of Indians who openly disrespect and attempt to forcibly enter Lisa's truck during a traffic jam.
** Lisa's Indian spotter, Tashi, frequently invoked this trope as well whenever others would question her driving abilities or become antagonistic based solely on her gender.
* PercussiveMaintenance: TruthInTelevision: Hitting the brake drums with a four-pound persuader is a time-honored technique for removing ice build-up. Or at least cracking the ice that is attaching the brake drums to the shoes.
* ProductPlacement: If a pickup truck is seen in any capacity other than wrecked on the side of the road, chances are it's a brand-new Ford.
* RealMenLoveJesus: Alex's Catholic faith is one of his defining characteristics.
* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: Plagued by mechanical problems and an unsympathetic boss, [[spoiler: Drew and Rick]] both bid the ice farewell.
* SignatureLaugh: Alex and Hugh both have one. Both men have a tendency to laugh uproariously at their own jokes.
* SirSwearsALot: While everyone on the show shares the trucker's penchant for using colorful language, Hugh averages about one [[SoundEffectBleep bleep]] per sentence, [[LampshadeHanging as noted]] by one of the Dalton Highway veterans, who accuses him of "Talking like a sailor."
* StockFootage: Some of the clips of trucks struggling up steep spots of the road look suspiciously similar. And that shot of the truck driving across the ice from beneath the ice? Yeah. Filmed for season one and still getting used in season 9.
* [[ThisIsSomethingHesGotToDoHimself This Is Something She's Got to Do Herself]]: [[spoiler:Lisa's final run in India, after Rick and Dave have called it a day.]] Continues in Season 2 of ''Deadliest Roads'', when [[spoiler:Dave decides he's had enough with truck breakdowns and goes home, while Lisa chooses to continue working in Bolivia.]]
* TrueCompanions: Lisa gets her share of guff from the guys (including sexist comments over the radio when they think she's not listening), but they genuinely look out for her when she's in trouble - especially during the ''Deadliest Roads'' spinoff, considering that a woman driving a truck attracts a lot of unwanted attention in India. Rick and Dave nearly came to blows with a mob of Indians over this.
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