Off Duty 'Trucker'

I mentioned this a few weeks ago, but I figured since we don't have a new episode of Ice Road Truckers to discuss this week, it's worth a bigger mention.  Fellow IRT fans know that Lisa Kelly is one badass mother-trucker out there on the Dalton.  She navigates through the dangerous haul road to carry supplies from Fairbanks to the oil-rich Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean.  She carries super-heavy chains and attaches them to the tires of her big rig (something that proves challenging to some of her male counterparts).  And, she endures her share of ribbing from the boys on the Dalton (whether it's blocking out mean radio traffic or having to work harder to prove herself).  She does it all with a smile on her face.  Recently, though, Esquire magazine highlighted Lisa's softer, more girly side when they named her "The Sexiest Trucker Alive."  Check out whether she's a country or city girl, how she got into trucking and how she feels about her new celeb trucker status after the jump.

In the Esquire Q&A, Lisa describes herself as a "country girl at heart."  She says that the choice to become a truck driver seemed "obvious" to her. "I had gone to college and I liked school. I started delivering pizza and I decided I liked being out of the building, so I started driving a school bus to get my licensing. I'd actually never been in a truck before I worked at Carlile and I announced before they even hired me that that's what I wanted to do," she tells the magazine.  Since her debut on the show last season (the show's first, and thus far, only female driver), Lisa has become a bit of a celebrity.  She tells Esquire that her new-found celebrity trucker status feels "really weird."  And when this season of IRT wraps later this summer, we have a new trucking experience to look forward to this fall: the Himalayas.  Luckily, Lisa will be along for that journey as well.  For the full Q&A with Lisa, check out Esquire's site.

Ice Road Truckers airs Sunday nights on History.  New episodes resume this Sunday, July 11th, at 9 p.m.  For more on Lisa, visit her official site with pics, a bio (learn how motivated and determined she was to accomplish her goal of becoming a trucker and what she does for fun), and a forum where fans can chat about, and sometimes with, Lisa.  You can also follow her on Twitter.