The History Channel's hit show “Ice Road Truckers” makes "an epic season twelve return" on Wednesday, Oct. 1, at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT, and a sneak peak at the episode delivers the goods longtime fans have come to expect.
The series, which started in 2007, launched a spin-off -- "IRT: Deadliest Roads," -- in 2010, and ended in 2017, restarts after almost a decade off air with beloved stars of the original series, Todd Dewey and Lisa Kelly, as well as some new faces and rookie drivers.
The History Channel let Overdrive watch the first episode of the new season, and it's a return to form fans of the old series will be sure to love.
The show looks different, shot sharply with a bold, cold color to every scene, but it succeeds in bringing to life the challenges of trucking across Canada's frozen lakes.
It's still what fans came to love with the original. The show mostly follows the exploits of drivers at "the most ambitious" fleet on the ice, Muskie Creek, which treks out to isolated communities in northeastern Canada.
Driving for Muskie are Dewey and Kelly. Kelly (who seems as if she hasn't aged a day) became an owner-operator in the years between the series, still pounding the ice roads, so much so in fact her truck spit the bit and she came to work for Muskie.
Dewey, during the show's recess, went back home and raised up two daughters who have now flown the coop for college. "The ice roads are calling me back," he says as he climbs in a Kenworth ready to haul 45,000 pounds of steel drill bits 800 miles across the frozen wilderness.
A driver new to northeastern Canada also tests his mettle there, and Muskie seems eager to kick the tires on his skill set, but no matter who is driving the truck in the show, one thing remains clear: This is a show about drivers.
At one point in Episode 1 of the new season, Dewey's load of drill bits shifts and threatens to fall off the truck. With a few chains, a nearby tree, and a bit of bushcraft and ingenuity, he yanks the pallets back in place and makes tracks.
"Figuring s#!% out and getting the job done, that's what I love!" he says when the work's finished.
Sure, Canada's ice road's are an extreme environment, but what truck driver can't relate to that feeling?
Overall, the show glorifies the toughness and grit truck drivers use to get the job done. Not a lot from 2017 has survived until today, but it's worth thinking about what makes trucking so enduringly popular.
Why did Ice Road Truckers regenerate, when so much of culture in 2017 has since disintegrated? The answer might lie with the job and the drivers themselves. Trucking is just badass, always has been, always will be.
On Wednesday, Oct. 1 at 9:30 p.m. ET/PT, that message will return to the airwaves on The History Channel for all to see.
[Related: Ice Road Truckers, with Lisa Kelly, returns to History Channel in October]
