This Is an Actual Working Pickup Truck Made out of Ice

It has come to my attention that a Canadian tire retailer — Canadian Tire — once made an actual working pickup truck out of ice for a commercial. And now I am bringing it to your attention, because, people… it’s an ice truck.

Here’s the situation: Canadian Tire was debuting a new battery that they claimed could work in temperatures of up to negative 40 degrees. So they created a commercial where they placed a battery inside some sort of freezer to get it down to negative 40. So far, so good. This seems like standard fare for a commercial advertising a winter-friendly battery to Canadians.

Not so standard fare: The battery was then placed inside a truck made entirely out of ice. The truck was then driven for 1.5 kilometers through a small town in Ontario in order to “set a world record.” I put this in quotes because I have no idea what world record this could possibly be. Longest drive in an ice truck? Furthest distance in a vehicle made of ice? Largest assemblage of insane Canadians?

I’ve watched both a commercial that involved the ice truck and the documentary video about the incident, and I’m just stunned that this happened. For one thing, ice is heavy: the documentary video (which is really just a 3-minute YouTube clip with inspiring music) says the ice alone weighed 14,000 pounds. The video also says Canadian Tire had to weld the truck’s frame to a rigid state, since any chassis flex would crack the ice and destroy the truck.

So what they did was, they found a pickup truck — it looks like a Chevy Silverado or a GMC Sierra, although they don’t announce the model — and they found some ice people (a woman at the start of the documentary calls this “the first of its kind in the ice industry”), and they cut out the ice blocks into various pieces that would ultimately look like a truck, and then… voila! They installed the battery in the crazy ice truck, they filmed the commercial, they drove the truck through the small town and maybe they set whatever world record they were attempting.

And then, presumably, it melted.

Doug Demuro

Doug DeMuro writes articles and makes videos, mainly about cars. Doug was born in Denver, Colorado, and received an economics degree from Emory University in Atlanta. After graduation, Doug spent three years working for Porsche Cars North America. Eventually, he quit his job to become a writer, largely because it meant that he no longer had to wear pants. Doug’s work has been featured in a… Read more about Doug Demuro

11 COMMENTS

verymoody December 6, 2016 At 08:40

The “Ice Industry”

ElfenSky December 2, 2016 At 17:45

I remember reading about it back in the day and thinking it was cool.

… Get it? Get it? Cool.

hazy3988 December 2, 2016 At 15:12

This would have made season 1 of Dexter WAY more impressive.