Ice Road Truckers, 1956 style.

awesome video. the real men of steel.

I live in northern AB, coldest I've seen here in my truckin career is -52C without wind chill. coldest I've ever seen was in the NWT at -58C on the shore of Great Slave Lake. every winter we see -40 at least once, no fun for truckin.

 

We barged our log trucks out to Icy bay last year. Gravy haul 7 miles flat ground to the waters edge, hauling little loads, because they wanted to off load and band them in one pick.
The deal was I didn't have to use wrappers, we kind of had a 25 mph speed limit too, so no way you were going to be losing logs, well the boss was not there and the truck foreman and woods boss kept griping at me the first day about the wrappers claiming the logs were slick. I kept telling them, I didn't have to tie down, that that was the deal, and no way we were going to slip any logs on flat ground, the second day, more of the same, but now were whining about hard hats too. I like geesh guys lighten up. Now they tell me we never know when osha will show up, now I lose it. I said they are not sending any navy seal frog men in here, if osha does show up, they have to use the very same dirt landing strip we do, and one of us will have to go give them a ride, I'm pretty sure we will know it. lol

 

The first road trip to Prudhoe bay Alaska involved dozers in the lead ,a special built rollagon , several trucks behind it. They also had a plane dropping out markers for the dozers . The trucks went a whole different route than we do today over into Canada and back, the trucks did not even get back the first year, the rollagon never got back on it's ownpower, it was finally hauled back and set up here until about 5 years ago when it was scrapped. I knew one of the guys that participated in that fiasco.
Later on supplies were hauled up on cat trains, with d7's pulling them, part of it was the same route, we take now, but they went out of route and it was more miles. I can just imagine sitting in a D7 for 1200 or more miles in the winter, couldn't cross the Yukon in the summer. I knew a couple of the guys that ran the cat trains, they have passed on in the last 10 years or so though. Tough old hands, they were.