Every now and then a travel idea comes along that sounds far too good to be true. This one has just arrived in South Africa, and it works like this: pick up a rental car in one city, drive it to another, and pay nothing for the hire.
It is called a car relocation, and the company bringing it to South Africa is Transfercar.
Because moving cars around the country costs them a fortune.
Rental fleets never stay where they are needed. Cars pile up in Cape Town at the end of the holiday season while the Johannesburg branches run short. Traditionally, rental companies load those vehicles onto car carriers and truck them back across the country at considerable expense.
Or they can hand the keys to a traveller who is heading that way anyway.
That is the entire concept. The rental company saves on transport costs, the traveller gets a car for free, and there is one less truck grinding up Van Reenen's Pass. In South Africa, relocation deals are currently listed at no cost at all, and where a nominal charge applies elsewhere it is R1 a day. There are no booking fees and no one-way fees either - the usual killer of any cross-country rental quote.
Transfercar has been doing this since 2008, long before the sharing economy became a buzzword. The founders watched trucks hauling rental fleets back and forth at great cost, while plenty of travellers would happily have driven those cars themselves, and built a marketplace to connect the two.
Hundreds of thousands of travellers have since collected a relocation car through the platform. It now operates across Australia and New Zealand, in the United States, and in Argentina and Brazil, offering cars, campervans and motorhomes depending on the market. South Africa is the newest addition.
The routes to watch
Relocations follow the rental industry's own imbalances, so certain corridors come up again and again. Durban to Johannesburg is a regular. So is Cape Town to Johannesburg, and the long, spectacular haul from Durban to Cape Town, including the Garden Route. Deals also appear in the reverse directions and between other branches around the country.
Word is already spreading. Since Transfercar opened in South Africa, a growing number of travellers have claimed a relocation and hit the road — among them trips from Cape Town to Johannesburg and Nelspruit to Johannesburg, with more routes driven every week.
Relocation deals are not permanent listings. They appear when a rental company needs a car moved, and they disappear within a few weeks — either because someone has claimed them or because the transfer window has closed. Anyone hoping to snag one should browse the current relocation deals regularly rather than waiting for the perfect route to materialise. The site also allows email alerts for specific routes, which does the watching automatically.
Cities like Cape Town and Durban often have relocation deals available. Photo by Sheila C on Unsplash.
How to get started
A quick sign-up on transfercar.co.za opens up the full list of deals, which can be browsed in full or filtered by pickup city, destination, or both. Each listing shows the dates by which the car must be collected and returned and how many free days are included, and whether the deal includes extras such as a fuel or toll contribution. Requests are reviewed by the rental company rather than confirmed on the spot, and an email with the pickup details follows.
From there it behaves like any normal car hire, which brings up the practical details worth knowing in advance. A credit card in the driver's name is essential - the rental company will ask for it at the counter, and no credit card means no car. Depending on the deal, a deposit may also be required at the counter. And where a deal does not include a fuel contribution, filling the tank is the driver’s own cost. Standard licence and minimum age requirements apply too.
New Transfercar listings are added frequently, so it’s worth checking the website regularly to find the best deals.
Worth building a trip around
A relocation is a properly booked rental car from an established company, with the price simply taken out of the equation. For anyone who has ever priced a one-way hire between Joburg and Cape Town and quietly closed the browser tab, that changes the arithmetic on a road trip entirely.
For South Africans, the timing could not be better. Domestic flights have become punishingly expensive, and for a family visit, a concert weekend or a trip to the Drakensberg, driving is often the smarter call.
The free days are only the starting point. Most listings include three or four to complete the transfer. Add a few paid days at the normal daily rate and - with no one-way fee eating into the budget - the total still beats any standard quote. A Garden Route road trip suddenly becomes genuinely affordable.
The deals are live now. The trick is looking before someone else does.
Book your rental here.
This is a sponsored post.
Sara Essop is a travel blogger and writer based in South Africa. She writes about family travel and experiences around the world on her blog "In Africa and Beyond". Although she has been to 53 countries thus far, she especially loves showcasing her beautiful country and is a certified South Africa Specialist.
