20 Crazy Restrictions Ice Road Truckers Have To Obey

Reality television is an odd thing. Less a glimpse into the lives of real people and more a story that has been manipulated to look like real life, it has grown into a behemoth; one of the largest and most profitable parts of the entire television landscape. Every reality show, whether a game show or just a kind of serialized documentary, massages the events in some way, some more than others.

The History Channel’s Ice Road Truckers is definitely one of the shows that manipulates its events more than others, and that includes the way it treats its stars. Created and produced by Thom Beers’ Original Productions, the show follows truckers who battle through difficult conditions to drive seasonal mining roads–roads that used to be lakes but freeze over in the depths of winter. Focused on its main star Alex Debogorski, Ice Road Truckers has also brought several other memorable people into the mix, like Hugh Rowland, Lisa Kelly, and many others.

Those stars have to put up with a lot, as the gig requires them to follow all kinds of rules and restrictions to be a part of the show. Some of them are benign, designed to ensure drivers’ safety on dangerous roads. Others are more of a hassle– things that complicated an already complicated job. There’s one thing that’s undeniable, however: it certainly has made for 11 entertaining seasons of reality television.

Here are 20 Crazy Restrictions Ice Road Truckers Have To Obey.

20 They had to find an alternate route

Ice Road Truckers may be popular, but that doesn’t mean it’s universally loved. The show has ticked off its fair share of people, including its fans, actual truckers, and its cast at one point or another. However, after the mining company that featured in the first season took exception, changes had to be made.

After driving the Tibbitt to Contwoyto Winter Roads in the first season, the show had to find a different road to drive in the second.

Contemporary reports said it was due to the mining company disliking the way the show depicted ice road trucking, and having an overall negative impact on their image. The cast had to adapt to a new route.

19 They have to make things seem more dangerous than they are

There can’t be interesting television without some conflict, and sometimes that means reality show cast members have to pretend there’s more conflict than there actually is.

Since Ice Road Truckers’ main draw is how tricky and dangerous the job is, that means pretending there’s more danger than there really is.

Former cast member Rick Yemm said in an interview that everything the drivers do on the show is safe, the show just makes it look precarious. “We know when it’s clear to do ‘stupid’ stuff, like drift around a corner. All that stuff that we do, it’s all done safely.”

18 No more than 16 hours driving a day

Aside from the restrictions from the production company and network force the stars of Ice Road Truckers to follow, there are also some laws to consider.

Trucking is a notoriously difficult job. It strains the human capacity to stay awake and focused for hours and hours. Some would truck for days straight if they were allowed to, so laws limiting the amount per day are necessary.

The ice road truckers aren’t allowed to drive for more than 16 hours per day, so they legally have to take breaks to sleep. However, there are no laws saying they have to take days off, which means they can work 112 hours a week.

The truckers have to obey this restriction, but when you think about it it doesn’t actually restrict them all that much.

17 They can’t all be veterans

For a show like Ice Road Truckers, you might expect it to be populated exclusively with people who know the trade inside and out, to educate the audience on how it works.

That wouldn’t actually provide entertaining television, so the show needs an interplay between veterans and rookies.

Instead of sticking to ice road vets, the show has repeatedly brought on people who are new to the ice roads–and a couple who were new to trucking in general.

Steph Custance is the most obvious example here, as she joined the show in her early twenties without any trucking experience at all.

16 They have to leave the show when they have health problems

Ice Road Truckers stars have had their share of gripes over their treatment by the show, but safety is one thing everyone takes seriously. That extends to medical issues, as several different cast members have taken time off to heal from injuries before returning to the show.

Trucking is a surprisingly physically demanding job, as staying focused and sitting for hours straight is actually difficult. Rather than deal with that while also having health problems, the drivers don’t risk it.

Steph Custance recently told fans she was dealing pancreatitis and taking off work. It seems other drivers also take the time to heal from any maladies they may have.

15 Never turn off your engine

Ice road trucking is a dangerous business, as the drivers have to face all kinds of environmental hazards. Most of these are obviously related to the extreme cold, and one ironclad rule ice road truckers are never supposed to break is very simple: never turn off your engine.

Of course, where’s the fun in playing by the rules? Ice Road Truckers star Lisa Kelly famously broke this restriction in one episode, as she chose to deal with engine trouble herself rather than wait for help.

After turning off her engine to look under the hood, Kelly was surprised when it wouldn’t start due to the freezing temperatures.

Luckily for her, she was able to get it going again with a bump start, but trucker fans all over the world were shocked at her choice.

14 They aren’t supposed to get rich

Producer Thom Beers has built a reality television empire, including Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch, by finding niche interests that pique the curiosity of a wide audience. What’s also curious is he pay he gives his stars, which is reportedly much smaller than other famous reality stars’.

Beers has said that he wishes to keep the authentic blue collar nature of shows like Ice Road Truckers intact– after all, who would watch a trucking show that starred people that didn’t need to be trucking?

Even so, compared to the money the cast of Jersey Shore or Duck Dynasty pulls in, it’s quite restrictive for Ice Road Truckers’ cast.

13 Endorsement deals aren’t allowed

The other thing that most reality shows can count on, thanks to the success of their show? Fame and celebrity, which usually brings with it the chance for lucrative endorsement deals. However, the cast of Ice Road Truckers doesn’t have access to that luxury, as their contracts specifically forbid them from inking those kinds of deals.

Much like their smaller paychecks, producer Thom Beers’ reasoning is that he needs his stars to remain authentically blue collar.

The truckers get paid a bigger salary than normal truckers but they’re denied the scores that reality stars can usually bank on.

If you were wondering why you don’t see these truckers in any ads, now you know.

12 The contracts are super controlling

As is probably clear by now, the Ice Road Truckers stars don’t have it as easy as other reality stars. Aside from lacking the big paychecks and endorsement deals, the truckers also get no residuals from the show. It’s all thanks to extremely controlling contracts they sign at the beginning of filming.

Even if you can ignore the limitations the contract places on the stars’ profits, former star Dave Redmon claims that the truckers also have to sign away the rights to their voice and likeness.

Redmon says “they basically take your life away from you” to keep production costs low and ensure the maximum profit margin for the producers.

11 Absolutely no speeding

Ice road trucking is a dangerous job that requires constant vigilance to do well. There are some rules that might seem like an afterthought on a normal highway that become much more important on the ice roads. One of those is the speed limit, which viewers found out during the very first season of Ice Road Truckers.

In season one of the show, there was a driver named Todd White who went by the nickname of “Chains.” He wound up doing 39 MPH in a 25 zone, and was caught.

This might not seem like a big deal, but the infraction was so severe that he was banned from ice road trucking entirely.

White tried to appeal, but to no avail, and had to leave the show.

10 The roads will be closed if they’re actually dangerous

Much is made of the danger of ice road trucking, and Ice Road Truckers sometimes gives the impression that these drivers are on their own against the elements. But there is, of course, a dedicated team of people making sure the ice roads are safe to drive. If the roads are too dangerous, they’ll be closed so nobody can drive on them.

Security teams patrol the ice roads to ensure the drivers’ safety.

The TV show is no exception to this, having its drivers take every necessary precaution.

If the ice is too thin or too soft and thus too weak to drive on, the security teams will alert the dispatchers to stop the trucks from crossing there.

9 The cast can’t control how the show portrays them

Reality show cast members sometimes find themselves playing exaggerated, cartoonish versions of themselves, but some ice road truckers says their show takes it to the extreme. In his interview, Rick Yemm took special care to talk about the character roles he and his fellow castmates were “slated” into.

Yemm said that he was forced to appear as the angry bad guy, Hugh Rowland’s incompetent sidekick, while Rowland had to appear the gruff, harsh team leader who never made mistakes.

Yemm says he and Rowland were more similar than different, and were both basically professional guys who could be jerks at times. Former cast member Dave Redmon voiced similar complaints.

8 The drivers are always sandwiched by camera crews

To really get enveloped in the show, Ice Road Truckers fans have to suspend a bit of their disbelief. After all, it may seem like the truckers are out on the road on their own, when they’re actually surrounded by two crews from the production company.

The vast majority of the driving shots on the show come from two camera crews, in front and behind the trucks.

This means that while the truckers have to appear to be fending for themselves, they actually have to be aware of two other rigs on the road with them. The drivers have to coordinate with a whole caravan of television crew, all while appearing to be doing a normal ice road run.

7 Drive someone else’s truck

One of the most important things to Ice Road Truckers‘ success is the feeling of authenticity that the show gives off — even when that’s not always the case.

This extends to the trucks they drive, as former trucker Rick Yemm says that the show had him act like he owned the truck he was driving, even though it wasn’t true.

Yemm doesn’t even own a truck in real life–the one on the show was owned by Hugh “Polar Bear” Rowland. Fans who read Yemm’s interview had to wonder: does that mean other truckers on the show were provided with trucks.

The show isn’t all that forthcoming with answers here, but we know that Yemm had to do it, so some speculate that there might be more.

6 They fudge their own driving skills

Much like how the cast members have to slot themselves into character archetypes the show lays out for them, they also reportedly had to act like they have certain levels of driving skills that may or may not be accurate.

The show allegedly polishes the skills of less experienced drivers to make it seem like they’re excellent at their TV job.

Some drivers, like Rick Yemm or Dave Redmon, have spoken out against their portrayal on the show, as they had to act like they were having more problems with their trucks than other drivers.

Both those stars have voiced complaints about how they were pigeonholed into “bad guy” roles, and Yemm brought up the fact that the show made him seem like a worse driver than he was.

5 Repeating lines

One of the secrets of reality television is that dramatic sequences are often cut together to seem like one continuous moment, when they’re actually a Frankenstein’s monster of audio and video clips spliced together from many different sources. Ice Road Truckers is no exception, and to aid in this the cast sometimes is forced to repeat lines over and over.

Dave Redmon claims producers would have the truckers repeat a phrase (i.e. “I hate this place“) several times with different inflections, which allowed editors to slide the audio into any spot they wanted without it sounding repetitive.

It obviously wasn’t fun for the stars to say words again and again.

Hearing that audio play over situations where they didn’t say anything like that must have been weirder.

4 Have fake fights with co-workers

Reality show producers often go help manufacture conflict on their shows. Sometimes that means they do their very best to get their stars to get angry with one another.

Former star Dave Redmon says that aside from them sticking certain lines into places where they weren’t actually said, the producers would actually tell their stars that other people on set didn’t like them.

Redmon claims that producers specifically tried to start a fight between Lisa Kelly and Maya Sieber by setting Sieber up as Kelly’s replacement.

That didn’t work, but Redmon also recalls them telling others that certain cast members were insulting them behind their backs, oftentimes based on nothing.

3 Work with inexperienced camera crews

If you’re working on a popular reality show, you might expect to work with people who know what they’re doing. Well, you’d be wrong, according to Dave Redmon. The former trucker recalls working with one cameraman who had learned how to use the equipment just a few minutes before they started filming.

“They take advantage of everybody on the show, from the camera guy to the AP (associate producer) to the talent,” he said.

Redmon blames the inexperience on set to the production company’s attempt keep costs low. Cast members reportedly just had to grit their teeth and hope that all their effort was getting filmed correctly, that their footage would be usable.

2 Truck companies get a say on the show

Fans may think they’re getting unfiltered reality when they tune in to Ice Road Truckers, but that’s just not the case. Trucking companies have a very strong influence on the show, according to former driver Dave Redmon, who says that he saw a contract that allowed them editing control.

Redmon claims the contract prohibited Carlile company truckers from being portrayed negatively on the show.

To achieve this goal, Carlile executives had access to the show’s footage, and were allowed to go through and cut anything they didn’t like. There has been no official confirmation of this, but the fact that Redmon’s trainer Tony was one of theirs and wasn’t show in a negative light seems to add some credence.

1 Follow a “script”

Part of the reason we’ve seen such a boom in reality television in the last ten years is the Writers’ Guild of America strike that occurred from 2007-2008. Television producers were stingy with writers’ residual payments, and when the writers went on strike in protest, producers turned to “unscripted” television to fill airtime and attract viewers.

However, shows like Ice Road Truckers aren’t really untirely unscripted. The cast of the trucking show have to work with producers allegedly telling them exactly what the conflicts are for each episode, exactly how they want them to react, and exactly how to proceed in their routes.

The show may not have a formal script, but the cast still reportedly has written instructions they have to perform.

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What other rules do Ice Road Truckers have to follow? Let us know in the comments!