Off the top of this week's Overdrive Radio episode one thing's clear. Longtime Alaska-based truck driver Lisa Kelly is now a business owner. That's right, in the very long time since I last spoke to her myself (though not the last time you read about her in Overdrive), she bought a 2019 Peterbilt 389 and leased on with a company to work Alaska's Dalton Highway (the "Haul Road," as its known).
It's also the 389 she's hoping to earn money enough to either repair or replace as shown in episode 1 of the brand-new season of the History Channel's "Ice Road Truckers" franchise, back after a long hiatus. Owner-operator Kelly's got history with the show, of course, since those first seasons in Alaska along routes partially on frozen lakes in far northern Manitoba in 2007.
[Related: Ice Road Truckers' new season delivers the goods]
She couldn't talk publicly about the fleet she's leased to today, per an agreement with the owner when she decided to go back to IRT, yet she was willing to share her own business's name. "I'm Arctic Fox Trucking," she said, and yeah, there's a story there.
"Back in the day when we were filming in Alaska, Season Three," she said, the Arctic Fox moniker was bestowed upon her by a young producer with the show, one among many nicknames passed around among cast and crew. "She thought it would be funny," Kelly added about that producer, yet "I didn't get it" at first.
Finally, though, she did, perhaps when Esquire magazine dubbed her the "sexiest trucker alive" in a headline back in 2010, coupled with photos of Kelly and the Kenworth she drove for well-known Alaska-headquartered Carlile Transportation. For all such attention she got back in those days, it was another quality that stood out in my conversation with her that same year, when she was back from the Himalayas after filming for the "IRT: Deadliest Roads" spinoff series -- a no-nonsense commitment to the work of trucking. It all ended with her in the role of something of a de facto ambassador to the world for North American hauling.
Overdrive Radio's sponsor is Howes, longtime provider of fuel treatments like its Howes Diesel Defender all-weather mileage booster and winter Diesel Treat anti-gel treatments to get you through the coldest temps, the Howes Multipurpose penetrating oil, and other products.
Pictured, clockwise from top left: Shaun Harris and sons in shop in Saskatchewan; Lisa Kelly, IRT newcomer for this season Scott "Scooter" Yuill; and Washington state resident Todd Dewey, back on the ice after a long hiatus.
As always for the reality-TV franchise, there’s plenty drama in those first couple installments, offering an entertaining window into a brand of trucking that’s certainly more man v. nature than most. In the podcast, drop into Kelly's story of how she came to truck ownership some years after the end of the "Ice Road Truckers" original run, as the owner-operator takes us back to her time as a company driver, then all that’s happened since. Short version, as it were, of a long, long story.
"A lot happened, and nothing happened," she laughed, to start it off. Take a listen:
[Related: Haul Road to the Himalayas: Interviewing Lisa Kelly]
