Here's a little lesson in media literacy: if a headline asks a yes or no question, the answer to that question is almost certainly "no."
So no, "The Ice Road," the one hour, 48 minute epic Netflix movie starring Liam Neeson and Laurence Fishburne will almost certainly not impact trucking the way that pilot-focused "Top Gun" shot U.S. Navy recruitment up 500% overnight in the 1980s.
But just because "Ice Road" won't solve carriers' biggest recruiting problems, often referred to as a "driver shortage," in any one-fell-swoop sort of way, that doesn't mean it isn't worth closer examination.
Following in the footsteps of the long run and well-documented popularity of History Channel's "Ice Road Truckers" reality-TV series, "Ice Road" is a movie from Netflix that stars A list actors to tell a story about moving urgently needed freight across frozen lakes in Canada. The film lionizes truckers who brave these high risk, high reward situations where their services mean life or death for their clients.
[Related: 'Ice Road Truckers' star Lisa Kelly still tackles Alaska's challenging 'Haul Road']
Over the weekend, "Ice Road" hit No. 1 on Netflix, the film-streaming platform with 158 million paying subscribers and millions more mooching off of a friend or relative's account. "Bird Box," another Netflix movie that hit No. 1 on the service, ended up being seen by 80 million people.
It's likely that a similar number of people could see "Ice Road" -- that's a huge number of potential impressions of the trucking world.
