Throng

ice road truckers (4/10)

This fascinating series reveals the virtually unknown occupation of ice road trucking, one of the world’s most dangerous jobs. Tonight, emergency services must clean up an overturned fuel tanker before it causes an environmental disaster. Experienced trucker Jay Westgard is distracted by news of his ill daughter; and rookie drivers T J Tilcox and Drew Sherwood struggle with freezing temperatures and broken vehicles.

The small town of Yellowknife in Canada’s Northwest Territory is home to the fascinating but little-known industry of ice trucking. Every year, engineers build ice roads on top of the region’s many frozen lakes to hold the weight of massive trucks, which deliver supplies to and from the territory’s diamond mines. The Canadian diamond industry is the third largest in the world and rakes in $1.9 billion a year – making the ice truckers an essential part of the country’s economy.

For these hardy truckers, plying the ice roads can be a lucrative profession – if they can cope with freezing temperatures, harsh weather and the everpresent threat of ice cracking under their wheels. They provide the only connection with remote settlements in virtually impenetrable terrain, putting their lives and the financial security of their families at risk in an exhilarating dash for cash.

Tonight’s episode reaches the 18th day of the ice-road season. Truckers have delivered more than 3,000 loads to the diamond mines, but they still have a further 7,000 to go. The temperatures are dropping, the loads are getting heavier and the ice is just three feet thick.

Emergency crews leap into action this week when a 50-ton fuel tanker flips over at the start of the ice road. Clean-up teams race to prevent an environmental disaster and remove the truck from the middle of the road before it blocks traffic and threatens the success of the entire season.

Jay Westgard, a 25-year-old ice trucker with eight years’ experience, hauls three giant water purifiers to the De Beers Diamond mine. This is a challenging 30-ton load that tests and stresses the ice for the entire journey. As if that were not enough to worry about, Jay has a 15-month-old daughter at home who is sick with pneumonia. Unfortunately, the ice road makes no allowance for family and “the dash for the cash” entails major sacrifices. For Jay, it means pressing on into the freezing wastes and being out of touch with news from home.

The wear and tear of the frontier road is not only taking its toll on man – it is also ravaging machines. Rookie Drew Sherwood finds himself back in Lee Parkinson’s garage after a rough trip to the Diavik diamond mine tears the battery box from the underbelly of his truck. Every day an ice road trucker is out of work, he is losing thousands of dollars. Drew is under pressure to hit the road as soon as possible.

Fellow rookie TJ Tilcox is also struggling. He battles sub-zero temperatures in a truck that is weatherproofed with duct tape. When the time comes to hit the sack, he discovers a thick coat of ice has formed around the edges of his bunk – a chilly reminder that that in the dead of winter near the Arctic Circle, there is no escape from the savage cold.