LOS ANGELES – The week talk show vet Jay Leno chose to call it quits is also the week he’ll be interviewing a veteran Canadian truck driver.

Thursday night, Hugh Rowland, 45, an owner-operator whose rigs are featured in the American History Channel’s “Ice Road Truckers”, will be taking Leno’s couch to talk about the new season of the “Real-Life Adventure” program.

Rowland has already been on Jimmy Kimmel Live and he says he’s pretty pumped about meeting Leno because the talk show host is renowned for his interest and expertise in engines and exotic cars.

Rowland himself has three International Eagles and a Western Star that he uses to deliver to the diamond mines and natural gas sites in the Arctic during the winter months and around his Winfield, B.C.-based landscaping company R&R Hoe Service.

Otherwise, he says, besides the fun of being filmed by the TV production company, his participation in the show has netted him lots of travel miles and a few trips to NASCAR races.

The other upside is, he says, he’s been swamped with applications from people who’ve seen the show wanting jobs as ice-road drivers.

In the Ice Road truckers series, Rowland, a bear of a guy whose every second sentence is punctuated with censor’s bleep, comes across as a gruff tough s.o.b. but a veteran trucker who knows every centimeter of ice north of Edmonton. And after 25 years of driving the ice roads, he probably does.