Can I get some feedback of someone who has towed a caravan to Malelane or Croc bridge gates in the past week.

Currently it seems as if all our coal exports take place with lorries via this route.

We are subscribed on Whatsapp groups on the these roads and not a single day goes past wthout reports of coal lorries being involved in serious accidents. Videos have been shown where the lorries are bumper to bumper for 34km.

It is only a matter of time before caravans will be involved in this.

Take the Tenbosch offramp from N4 and drive past Ngwenya lodge and turn  left on R571 to Crocodile bridge

Relaxed Camper wrote:

Take the Tenbosch offramp from N4 and drive past Ngwenya lodge and turn  left on R571 to Crocodile bridge

It is the second Ten Bosch off ramp from the N4.   Avoid the first one as the road is not friendly and takes you to Marloth Park.  The second one is the road Geert refers to above.

The road has hundreds of trucks on it. Most are coal trucks between Bronkhorstspruit and Belfast (Arnot PS). Then there are also all the trucks exporting goods to Maputo which backup at the border post for up to 40Km (up to Malelane). 

The traffic over weekends, especially Sundays, is the least. Try to plan your trip to be over a weekend.

The detour mentioned above only skips about 10Km of the N4 to the west of Komatipoort, but you also skip the town of Komatipoort.

Luckily the N4 toll road is very well maintained and has many overtaking and dual sections.

Safe travels.

All our best coal going to Russia & China while Eksdom burns rubbish with stones & scrap metal in!🙄

Agree with all of the above. Got back from the Kruger a month ago. Entered Croc Bridge on a Sunday. Pure fluke as I had no idea about the trucks to Maputo. Slept over at Nelspruit on the Saturday so was only about 120 kms' drive on the Sunday. What an eye-opener that convoy was! Spoke to a traffic officer at the Malelane turn-off who said this was daily transportation of copper from the Northern Transvaal for sale to the overseas market via Mozambique. My immediate thought was: is he spinning the party line re copper or was this our coal waving goodbye across the border? Don't know the minerals mined up there, but with that number of trucks per day heading east, it wouldn't be a stretch to slip coal in between the copper in that large a shipment. Maybe I'm too much of a cynic. Who knows.....

All these trucks will soon destroy the roads in the park. In Kgalagadi where there was a similiar situation you now have to stay over in the park and is not allowed to drive straight through. How strictly this is enforced is anyone's guess. If it is you might find trucks crowding some rest camps at night and making it unpleasant for tourists.

Fred wrote:

All these trucks will soon destroy the roads in the park. In Kgalagadi where there was a similiar situation you now have to stay over in the park and is not allowed to drive straight through. How strictly this is enforced is anyone's guess. If it is you might find trucks crowding some rest camps at night and making it unpleasant for tourists.

I don't think the trucks are in the park. They are on the N4 to Maputo.

That's a relief!  It would be possible for them to pass through the park into Moz and I deducted that was what Harv was saying. 

For some or other reason recently we are hearing trains passing through Pietersburg at night on their way to the Lowveld.  This has not been the case for as long time so it might be that some improvement might have been made on rail transport.  For years the electric overhead cables on the line from Pretoria to Pietersburg have been hanging loose meaning no trains whether electric or diesel could pass.  We plan to drive down to Pretoria over the week-end and will see what the situation is at present.  If rail transport could be jacked up, it will certainly be good for the maintenance of main roads and make it much more pleasant and safe for other motorists.  I hope I am not being too optimistic.

Sorry if I misled you Fred! On that Sunday the trucks were parked on the inside lane of the N4, reducing the dual carriageway to a single lane effectively from Malelane to the border. We took the Komatipoort turn-off as we were booked at Croc Bridge for our 1st 4 nights. It would be safe to assume that the backup extended for the final 10kms to the border post aswell. Not ideal driving conditions if you are towing a van...