ABANDONED A truck lies abandoned in the snow with its driver having walked to Harrismith to seek warmth and food. The photographs below show the stranded trucks at the Tugela Truck Inn and the Tugela plaza. Awfully sludgy but the surroundings of the Tugela Plaza looks pretty under snow. 'You can keep this for a lark' is clearly written across the face of a senior emergency helper from Care Assist.

Twenty years behind the wheel of a truck had not prepared Edgar Jembere, 45, a truck driver for Abel Removals, for anything like this. He was on his way to Johannesburg when he reached the Tugela Plaza and was told Van Reenens Pass was blocked and that he was going no further.

He was more than a little alarmed. For a start, he had never seen a snow-storm in his entire life. Now he was stuck in a blizzard. Even worse, he had no food with him and only a single blanket to keep him warm.

Jembere was just one of hundreds of truck drivers caught in the fierce snow-storm which took the country and hauliers by surprise - and it was a nightmare he will never forget. "I really thought it was the end of the world. That cold was too terrible. I could have stood under a boiling shower for an hour just to get warm. Heh, it was very bad," he says.

FleetWatch first realised the severity of the storm when we received a frantic call from Douglas Driver of Laser Couriers saying he couldn't get food to his drivers - and could we help.

FleetWatch immediately donned its catering cap and started phoning around. By pure luck, while speaking to Chris Pinto, former sales director of the former ERF Trucks SA (ERF has since been incorporated into the MAN Truck & Bus stable in South Africa) we found he has a brother, Andrew, who runs a London Pie franchise.

Andrew contacted FleetWatch and then got in touch with a friend, Dean Hide, financial director for Spur Corporation. To cut a long story short, the managers of the Spur franchises in Ladysmith and Harrismith went out in bakkies to see how they could help. They then went back and cooked up piles of hamburgers which they took out to the drivers. So it's a big well done to Spur for their magnificent response to FleetWatch's plea to try feed the drivers.

FleetWatch also contacted Sakkie Cornelissen, manager of the Tugela Truck Inn, and asked if companies could open up a tab at his facility to enable drivers stuck at the Tugela plaza to buy food. Sakkie readily agreed and later told FleetWatch that he had done this for a number of companies and that the tabs had all been settled.

During the days of siege, not only did he play host to many stranded drivers but he also managed to take some of the photographs you see in this feature. Thanks for all you did for the truckers Sakkie - and for the photographs you supplied to us.

Another man who went to the rescue was Phillip Hull of Community Medical Services who
heard there was a danger of some of the drivers suffering from hypothermia. He, along with volunteer Terance Brown and friend Tom Brown of Care Assist, set off from Johannesburg for Harrismith, stopping on the way to buy 120 loaves of bread for the drivers. Our thanks to these guys for going out of their way to make the lives of the stranded truck drivers that bit easier.

While the drivers suffered cold and discomfort, operators suffered financial losses. Des Joseph of Bulldog Hauliers, for example, says he had 16 trucks stuck on both sides of Van Reneens pass. Klasie Slabber from Bethlehem-based Into Trans also says he took a big blow to his pocket. "We had four trucks stuck at Van Reenens for four days. At a few grand per truck per day, work it out for yourself. That was a rough one." The money lost can never be recovered.

The good news is that no one was hurt and no cargo was lost or damaged. It was obviously too cold for the hijackers and thieves to be out.

SLIP SLIDING Above: Sentinel Transport's trucks - safe and sound in the company's own truckstop outside Harrismith. Top centre: That's ice those wheels are on and it's the ice that caused trucks to keep slip-sliding away across the highway as they parked (far right).

More SNOW ZONE