TRANSPORT AND MATERIALS HANDLING A
t Special Driver Resourcing (SDR), we provide HGV drivers solely to the builders merchant sector. We maintain a national pool of fully qualified
HGV and lorry-mounted crane operators who specialise in the builders merchant environment: navigating tight residential streets, off-loading safely with remote cranes, and completing the site paperwork that contractors demand. As every driver is risk-assessed and yard-trained before deployment, clients can book cover for as little as one shift, or secure a rolling rota that dovetails with permanent staff leave calendars. Other employment agencies tend to employ their people on a job-to-job basis, but by employing full time, we can invest in training, development, people services, and support. It means we can deliver drivers of the quality that merchants are aiming for within their permanent workforce.
Specialist market
When Stark Building Materials UK tendered out its driving agency supply, SDR was formed as a single contract business. At the time Stark owned around 30 brands that all traded independently but shared services, so we were dealing with each of those brands separately. It was the equivalent of having multiple customers across the merchant sector. We’ve since used that unique foundation to start expanding out and selling to other builders merchants. The model we used meant we already had quite a lot of ‘cluster drivers’; who each covered an area of the country, on full time employee contracts. Because of this, when using our drivers, merchants are getting a permanent, full time quality driver who is used to these vehicles, used to these products, and experienced with their customers.
A shortage of drivers
We are seeing an overall shortage of drivers in the sector. This peaked around COVID, when the requirement from logistics went through the roof, and while it’s not quite front-page news now, in the last 18 months, merchants have lost drivers to the wider HGV sector. A driver from this sector can be very hard to replace, and it can take a long time to build that kind of experience pool. On top of this, the average age of the HGV driver is in their 50s. It is a hugely ageing population, and you’re not getting many young people coming into the market. Because most of the trucks in the builders merchant sector are lorry-mounted crane trucks or lorry-mounted forklifts, drivers in this sector require additional certification. This can be a barrier to entry, and while the government launched a skills boot camp programme aimed at encouraging more drivers in, this has since drastically reduced, and there is still a shortage of examiners for getting people through. There’s not enough of an effort from the bigger guys to create the kind of training environments that you need to develop drivers. It’s almost a Catch-22 situation. People want
PART TIME WORK: FULL TIME QUALITY
Simon Prichard, managing director of SDR, tells Oliver Stanley the benefits of hiring full time drivers for the merchant sector.
qualified drivers with experience, but very few people offer new drivers the experience they need to get a job.
Drivers in this sector need to build experience with specialist equipment, and If you don’t do it properly, it can be dangerous to the driver, it can be dangerous to the public, and it can also damage your products and reputation. Perhaps one of the best ways to build experience is what we refer to as shadowing, for drivers to spend some time working with the oversight of someone more experienced. This means paying for somebody who is not independently productive, so many neglect shadowing, but if drivers are thrown in at the deep end, it can be overwhelming and can drives people out of the sector. Shadowing is important for bringing drivers in and nurturing them.
Encouraging new drivers We are an active part of the BMF’s BM Careers platform and its wider, ‘Making a Material Difference’ campaign; to, highlight the attractiveness of the sector for drivers. Our goal is to take a leading role in representing drivers as a key subsector of that market.
There are HGV driving apprenticeships that are available that the BMF run alongside broader
October 2025
www.buildersmerchantsjournal.net
government schemes funding apprenticeships. It costs just to get the Class 2 category license, which most building materials trucks are, so we encourage making use of whatever funding schemes are available.
The traditional path of a lorry driver is usually what they call warehouse to wheels, but another path i see is yard to wheel, encouraging workers in the yard or running the forklift to progress through onto the HGVs. This way, drivers start with an understanding of the sector. I think merchants sometimes need to refresh themselves on how crucial their drivers are to their business, and the difference between an ordinary driver or a good experienced driver. We need to understand what a crucial role drivers play,and support them in that role through their training, development, and experience. That’s something that we’re aiming to highlight in our position.
We’re trying to do all of the things I would preach builders merchants should do, both to the benefit of our portfolio, and to the wider merchant sector. We’ve been working with a training partner on skills boot camp, and we’re shortly going to announce some apprenticeship places via the BMF’s apprenticeship scheme. BMJ
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