We get questions all the time about the roads up here in Alaska, the conditions, the weather, how the trucks perform, and is the Ice Road Truckers show real?? Well, hopefully I can answer some of those questions for you today.
First and foremost, being an Alaska Freight truck driver has it’s ups and downs just like any job. There’s days you love it and days you hate it! Sometimes it’s very enjoyable and the skyline is beautiful, but other times the weather just kicks your butt and you want to go home and sleep. Just like any job, you have to take the good with the bad.
Pay can be very good and depends on a number of different factors like freight loads, supply and demand, and even weather conditions. The weather up here obviously can be brutal at times and makes life difficult for everybody. Cold weather and vehicles have never been best friends but we tend to manage. Precautions are made to eliminate unneeded wear and tear on our trucks and we treat them like babies. We simply have to because they are the lifeline of our company. Without our trucks, freight isn’t moving and no one is getting paid! Even worse, people aren’t getting their supplies and they depend on us to make these deliveries.
I’ll have to admit I don’t watch the show Ice Road Truckers too often but I sure hear about it enough! We get questions about that show all the time and people are always asking if it’s real. I always answer Yes and No. You always have to remember it’s a TV show and little extra things are thrown in here and there to “spice” it up but most of the driving situations are real. A lot of them we have encountered as well and it is very difficult to drive these massive loads through the snow and ice. Slipping and sliding and getting stuck on hills is somewhat common but we always tend to manage the situation.