THE DEFINITIVE TRUCKING SITE

October 2008

That old chestnut, ‘you can’t please all of the people all of the time’ really rings true when you look at the Mpumalanga towns of Ermelo and Bethal that see thousands of coal trucks passing through their streets on a daily basis. While all the residents and businesses of these municipalities demand electricity to function, they are feeling an unfair burden is being placed on them by Eskom’s inability to provide transport routes for coal that do not threaten their way of life. 

It may come as a surprise to many, but Ermelo has some 90 guest houses, many of which line the same streets used 24/7 by 56-ton interlink coal tippers. That’s probably the highest per-capita guest house rate in the world, not to mention the per-capita truck figures. 

Visiting Ermelo and Bethal, one can’t help but feel that both towns are under siege by coal trucks. Road surfaces bear the scars of constant pounding by overloaded truck axles, harsh braking and shot suspension systems. On the road to one power station, a pothole needed 3.6-tons of gravel to fill. It was a death-trap of note.

Apart from the dangers of damaged road paving, coal trucks often travel in convoys, leaving no gaps between them for motorists to overtake. On occasion, a truck will overtake another as happened in March 2008 when a truck hit a taxi head-on and killed 15 people. 

Athol Starke, head of Highveld Tourism asked in a Carte Blanche interview: “Why do we have these thousands of trucks destroying our livelihoods, destroying the economy, our environmental health? My children can’t go on the streets. Coal trucks have cost the tourism industry in this region about R10-million. In this town, people look at Eskom with almost a belligerent attitude because it has brought devastation into this town. Why must we, as a town, pay such an enormous national price so that people in Cape Town can have electricity? Yes, we need electricity, but do this thing in a professional way.” 

	Guest house owner Hennie Davel has much to be fearful of when he considers how coal trucks will continue to run past his establishment for years to come,  effectively ruining his business.
	The Mpumalanga Highveld is a tourist mecca and is home to the largest natural fresh water lake in South Africa. This and other tourist attractions are seriously threatened by coal trucks posing safety risks and ruining roads.

FleetWatch spent an afternoon in Ermelo speaking to locals about the heavy truck traffic. “The main problem is the noise these trucks make, especially at night. My customers spend one night and never return because they can’t get any sleep,” says Hennie Davel, owner of two guest houses in Ermelo. 

At another guest house on Fourie Street, a main thoroughfare for coal trucks, the problem extends beyond noise to health and asset destruction. One young barmaid fresh off the boat from the UK has never had red-eye or sinusitis in her life - until she moved to Ermelo. 

“It’s the coal dust that’s doing it,” she says. The owner of the establishment says the trucks brake so hard that the earth literally shakes and bottles of liquor in his bar smash to the floor. 

This Ermelo guest house has a good turnover now but will it and the many others like it in the area be able to sustain their client-base as truck traffic increases over the next two years?

According to Paul Buckley of Tutuka Transport Holdings, plans are afoot to build a road that bypasses Ermelo to carry coal truck traffic from the north, east of the town and south towards Majuba and other power stations to the west. Also, “a new railway line will run from the east of Ermelo, south to Majuba and this should also alleviate the suffering in town. But this will only happen in a couple of years time,” he says. 

There really is no simple solution to the electricity supply problem South Africa faces right now. One thing is for certain – if it wasn’t for trucks, we’d all be in the dark. And while plans are rolling out to reduce our reliance on coal trucks, they’re not going away in a hurry. 

As a parting shot, here’s ex-minister Alec Erwin: “Our job is to make sure we push the strategic investment programme, that we ensure that there is the co-ordination to do it and accept that we slowed down the investment process a few years ago and we paid the price. You can cry about that as much as you like, but it is pointless. You’ve actually got to start building, and that is what we are doing.”