Backing up is a vital skill when it comes to truck driving. You have to reverse in and out of offloading and loading points and, most importantly, you will need to reverse your truck out of tricky unforeseen situations.
Like this truck driver from Baleka Freight, a trucking company based in Cape Town. He was forced to reverse for about 1,5km to find a place to safely make a U-turn after the GPS took him to Victorian bridge on the Silver River Pass which is too small for trucks.
According to George Herald, the trucker was on his way to George after picking up some produce at one of the farms on the road. He had arrived from the Wilderness side.
The GPS directed him to use the same road towards George but little did he know that trouble awaited him ahead.
When he got to the bridge, he found out that it was too narrow for his Scania truck towing a 12m refrigerated trailer would not make it through.
He had no option but to reverse until he could find a safe place to turn.
“Luckily we had a very experienced driver,” said LC Steyn, operation manager of Baleka Freight.
Read also: Driver tries to run after wedging truck under bridge on busy Durban freeway
Fortunately, the driver made it to a safe place where he turned and took a safe route.
The Silver River Pass, is one of the Garden Route’s ‘Seven Passes’, and covers 2,7 km of narrow, twisting tar-road driving through dense indigenous forests, descending to and from the Silver River.
It has 30 bends, corners and curves compressed within it’s fairly short length, which equates to an average of one corner every 90m.
Many heavy duty trucks get stuck on the bridge. It could not be immediately verified if there are enough signs warning about the the bridge.
SA Trucker urges drivers to not only rely on the GPS directions as exhibited in this case that they may not be the best option. Rather, check the map to confirm the route before blindly following the sweet lady voice.
