page_title: Ice Road Truckers (season 1)
section_title: Drivers
hierarchical_section_title: Ice Road Truckers (season 1) / Season 1 / Drivers
caption_attribution_description: English: Rick Yemm at truck fest at Haydock Park racecourse, England, 12 September 2009
context_page_description: This is a list of Ice Road Truckers Season 1 episodes.
context_section_description: Hugh 'The Polar Bear' Rowland (born 1957): A very rough-around-the-edges, 20-year veteran of ice-road trucking, based in Kelowna in southern British Columbia. He is of French descent and claims to be known by the ice road trucking community as "The Polar Bear", which he says refers to his overbearing, annoying personality, bearish attitude, stamina, and consistently high number of loads delivered per season. Rowland owns four trucks and drives one; the other three are manned by ice road rookies Drew Sherwood, Todd White, and Rowland's associate and year-round employee Rick Yemm. Rowland's trucks all have the emblem R&R Hoe Service on the doors – the company Rowland owns in Kelowna (actually Winfield, BC).
  During the course of Season 1, all three of Rowland's hired drivers end up prematurely leaving the ice road. White was banished for excessive speeding (episode 5), Yemm left following heated disagreements about the working condition of Rowland's trucks (episode 9), and Sherwood left after several vehicle breakdowns (episode 7).
  Rowland's truck is called "The Crow's Nest" and is kept in good condition, as was Yemm's truck, besides the heater (as seen throughout the season). The trucks driven by Sherwood and White had a multitude of mechanical problems. After Sherwood's departure, Rowland hired a fourth driver named Danny Reese. In the final episode of the first season, Rowland's luck finally ran out when his truck was sideswiped by another trucker on the ice road, knocking a driving axle off the chassis. He ended up finishing the season in the truck originally driven by Yemm.
  Rick Yemm: One of Rowland's employees. This brash, tattooed trucker, also from Kelowna, was in his second year as an ice road trucker during Season 1. In 2006, Yemm was one of the first truckers onto the ice road after it opened when, according to him, the sound of cracking ice was loudest. This stressful experience almost caused him to quit driving the ice road right then and there. He decided to continue, however, remarking, "I was too stupid and too stubborn to quit."
  During Season 1, the floor heater in his truck was malfunctioning. This was a major source of tension between Rowland, the truck's owner, and Yemm, who expected Rowland to take care of the problem so that he could continue hauling loads without risking severe frostbite. Yemm ultimately quit and returned home, feeling his friend was not fulfilling his responsibilities to maintain the trucks.
  Yemm is known for being hard on the trucks by constantly beating on them. In one episode, Yemm is seen bouncing up and down, pumping the accelerator pedal up and down, and messing with the steering wheel, all the while facing the camera and saying "yee-haw motha fucker!"
  Alex Debogorski: A legend in the ice road trucking community, and 2007 marked Debogorski's 26th year as an ice road trucker. Debogorski has 11 children and nine grandchildren, and is a year-round resident of Yellowknife. As stated in Season 1, since he has been a staple driving the ice roads, it is something of a good-luck charm for Debogorski to pull the first load over the ice roads at the beginning of every season. He is such a devout Catholic that by season 9, when he joined long-time rival Hugh Rowland's company in Canada, Debogorski had "The Preacher Man" emblazoned on the side of his truck. (Polish Dębogórski means "coming from or living at Oak Mountain".)
  In Season 2, Debogorski had to leave early because of illness (a pulmonary embolism) as seen in episode 8, "A Trucker’s Farewell".
  Jay Westgard: Westgard is also a year-round resident of Yellowknife. Despite his relative youth (he is 25 years old), Westgard is considered by the ice road community as the most talented driver of his generation (as mentioned in the premiere). He began driving trucks at age 16 and owned his first truck by age 18; at the time of his introduction on IRT, Westgard had acquired a reputation as a driver who excels in hauling oversized loads. Because of his experience, he is entrusted with delivering some of the more demanding loads, such as a 48-
caption: Rick Yemm at Truckfest at Haydock Park Racecourse, England, September 12, 2009.
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