How Ice Road Truckers' Lisa Kelly Started Her Career As A Truck Driver

"Ice Road Truckers" has had many seasons on the History Channel, and during those seasons, only three women have been featured as truckers on the show. And of those three only one has had the staying power to make it more than two seasons on the air, and her name is Lisa Kelly. Kelly has appeared on all but three seasons of the show — and to many, she has proved herself capable of the job over and over again — but to others, she was brought on as a gimmick. "Lisa brought a lot of ratings to the show. They're trying to make a trucker out of her, they're teaching her, you know, how to do heavy haul ... she'll be a pretty good little trucker when they're done with her," said fellow trucker Hugh Rowland in an interview.

Despite what Rowland says about her, she got her start as a trucker before she ever made her first appearance on "Ice Road Truckers" and did a lot of other pretty interesting things along the way.

Lisa Kelly shares that she was originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan, before her family moved to Alaska when she was 6 years old in the biography on her website. After completing high school, she says she moved back to Grand Rapids for college before dropping out after her first semester and heading back to Alaska to find a job. Trucking wasn't her first job when she returned. Instead, she worked at a gas station and then later at a pizza place. It was at the pizza place that she realized how much she enjoyed driving, so she branched out to work as a delivery driver for a bakery and then later became a school bus driver.

Kelly always seemed to have a passion for anything on wheels, having participated in the competitive motocross scene throughout her life, and it was this love for the road that eventually led to her first job in the industry working for Carlile Transportation, an Alaskan haulage company. Kelly appeared on an episode of "The Late Show with David Letterman" in October of 2010, where she said she had been working with Carlile Transportation for seven years. That marked her beginning in the trucking industry well before "Ice Road Truckers" was a show on TV.

Through her love of driving, Kelly found her spot as a truck driver on one of the most dangerous routes in America and as a very beloved character on History Channel's "Ice Road Truckers."