How Business Rescue Has Become a Soft Landing for Liquidators

The Harsh Reality Facing Struggling Entrepreneurs in the Trucking Industry.

You’ve built a business from scratch, not inherited, not bought, but forged through blood, sweat, missed birthdays, and endless sleepless nights. You’ve paid staff before yourself. You’ve skipped holidays. You’ve carried the load when clients didn’t pay and when tyres burst on payday. Then, the curveballs start flying.

Maybe it was COVID. Maybe commodity prices plummeted. Maybe Transnet brought your route to its knees. One day you wake up and realise the numbers aren’t adding up anymore. Your cash flow is gasping, creditors are circling, and you’re facing the terrifying possibility that your business – your life’s work – might not survive.

In desperation, you turn to what you’re told is your last hope: Business Rescue.

“Rescue” – Or Something Else?

The term “business rescue” sounds reassuring. It promises a lifeline – time to regroup, renegotiate, and recover. But what many distressed business owners discover too late is that the process often doesn’t rescue anything.

You’re introduced to a Business Rescue Practitioner (BRP) – someone with a law, engineering, or accounting background, usually confident, well-spoken, and armed with the promise of sorting it all out. You breathe a sigh of relief. You sign. And just like that, your business isn’t yours anymore.

From that moment, your employees are told to wait. Creditors are notified. Operations slow down. And suddenly, the person you thought would help starts behaving more like a stock-take officer for liquidation than a lifeline for recovery.

The Reality of the Numbers

Statistically, less than 2% of trucking companies placed under business rescue in South Africa ever recover. Most are either pushed or quietly slid into liquidation and when that happens, a new machine kicks in.

Auctioneers, attorneys, liquidators, and often the very same networks connected to BRPs, step in to feed on what’s left. Trucks get sold for next to nothing. Contracts vanish. Staff are retrenched. And the entrepreneur? Left with nothing but memories, regret, and questions about whether “rescue” was ever the real goal.

Read also: Hendrik van Wyk Vervoer Rescue Update: Creditors to Decide the Future on 19 June

A Flawed System That Picks Winners Before It Starts

The process, as it’s structured, is stacked against the small business owner. The BRP, though technically independent, is usually appointed with creditor consent – often the biggest creditor is a bank or OEM financier. That’s the same entity that stands to gain more from liquidation fees and asset recovery than a drawn-out rescue attempt.

And make no mistake – the rescue doesn’t fail because you were a bad operator. It fails because the system is designed to benefit the parties behind you, not the ones who built the business in the first place.

As one trucker put it recently, “The day I signed those rescue papers, the auctioneer started making calls.”

Not All Are Bad – But Too Many Are

To be fair, there are BRPs who genuinely want to help, and some businesses do get saved. But too often, the process turns into a structured dismantling of a once-functioning company. All that’s needed is a few passive decisions, a few late phone calls, or a vague plan – and suddenly, liquidation seems inevitable.

Some critics say the process should be renamed from “business rescue” to “business recovery and disposal” because that’s what it becomes for most.

So What Can Be Done?

• The Business Rescue process needs reform, especially in industries like trucking where operations are complex and time-sensitive.
• Industry-specific BRPs with transport experience should be appointed – not generalists unfamiliar with fuel prices, load logistics, or how downtime wipes out margins.
• Creditors – especially banks and OEMs – must be held to account for their role in forcing liquidation instead of working with rescue plans.
• And finally, entrepreneurs must approach business rescue like a legal war, not a mercy mission. Have your own lawyer. Ask hard questions. Protect your financials. Don’t hand over keys before you know the exit plan.

Business rescue, in theory, is a tool to help companies survive. But in practice, it has become a comfortable conveyor belt toward liquidation for many. Until the law changes – or BRPs are properly regulated, trained, and held accountable – it remains a risky, often final, roll of the dice.

So next time you hear “business rescue,” remember: it may not be the rescue you think it is.