A sand and aggregate business lives on trips: loads dug or crushed, loaded, weighed and delivered. Drivers, yard hands and dealers who meet customers decide whether each trip is on time and billed properly.
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Share your requirementsA sand and aggregate business supplies sand, gravel, crushed stone and manufactured sand to builders, ready-mix plants and contractors. Some own a pit or a manufactured-sand plant, some run stockyards and a fleet of tippers, and many do all three. Staff include loader and tipper drivers, yard hands, plant operators, weighbridge and billing clerks, dispatchers who take calls from site engineers, and a few salespeople. Work depends on weather, construction cycles and local rules about extraction, so weeks of rush follow weeks of idleness. Customers judge the firm on the driver who arrives. The wider energy and utilities sector and the mining and quarrying hub cover shared ground.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
A tipper driver is the face of the firm at a building site, yet he has never been taught what to say about delays or short loads.
Delivery slips, weighbridge entries and invoices are made by different people, and mismatches become payment arguments.
Drivers and yard hands are called up when orders spike and let go when they dry up, so good ones drift to other fleets.
Pay tied to trips can tempt drivers to overload, rush or skip rest, and the owner pays later in repairs and fines.
Who goes where, when and with which truck sits in one person's head or a notebook, and absence brings chaos.
Manufactured sand plants use crushers, screens and washers, and operators often learn on the job with little written guidance.
Commission and credit given to buyers create risk, and the firm often lacks a clear plan for how sales staff are rewarded and checked.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Performance Management; Compensation, Payroll and Benefits; HR Analytics and Management Reporting. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for energy and utilities, not in general.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a sand and aggregate businesses business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A short session on arrival routines, handling complaints, delay messages and what not to promise.
What this coversHideA short session on arrival routines, handling complaints, delay messages and what not to promise. The customer-service skills training fits well.
One trip number carried through all three records, with a daily check by a clerk who does not make the entries.
What this coversHideOne trip number carried through all three records, with a daily check by a clerk who does not make the entries.
A list of drivers and yard hands who have worked before, a retainer or priority for the best, and a plain call-up routine.
What this coversHideA list of drivers and yard hands who have worked before, a retainer or priority for the best, and a plain call-up routine.
Look at trip rates, fixed pay and bonuses together, so speed and load are not rewarded at the cost of safety.
What this coversHideLook at trip rates, fixed pay and bonuses together, so speed and load are not rewarded at the cost of safety. See the performance management process page.
A shared board or sheet of trips, with a second person trained to plan when the dispatcher is away.
What this coversHideA shared board or sheet of trips, with a second person trained to plan when the dispatcher is away.
Licence details, joining papers and training for each driver and operator in one place.
What this coversHideLicence details, joining papers and training for each driver and operator in one place. The employee information management work covers the format.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Driver and yard staff sessions on arrival, delays and complaints, which affect repeat orders.
Pay and review design for drivers and salespeople that rewards care with the load and the customer.
One clean file per driver and operator, holding licence, joining and training details.
Simple monthly figures on trips, absences and exits, so decisions come from counted data.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in energy and utilities, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Engineers, technicians and operators leave energy and utilities firms for reasons that differ by project and plant. How to listen, ask better questions and act.
6 min readRead article
Measures that show how reactor, console, lab and gantry staff are really doing, the ones that mislead or bury near misses, and a monthly sheet an in-charge can run in twenty minutes.
7 min readRead article
How to design incentives for operators, setters and inspectors in fastener, gear, spring and valve units so that accepted lots, not piece counts, earn the bonus.
7 min readRead article
Six numbers, one page, same format each month. What they are, how to define them so they mean the same thing twice, and what each one tells you.
8 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Many firms mix a fixed element with trip rates. Look at the habits your design encourages, such as overloading or skipping rest, and adjust. Write the scheme down so drivers know it.
Use one trip number across records and have a clerk who does not enter them check a daily sample. Fix the cause of each mismatch, whether weighing, writing or billing.
Keep a pool of known drivers and yard hands with a way to call them quickly. Give a small advantage to those who return each season. This builds a base of reliable people.
Often yes, but link it to payments collected and not only orders taken. Set credit limits and review them. Write the rules so they are clear and the same for all.
Yes, on safe stacking, loader movements and dust. Short practical sessions with a sign-off are usually enough, and they cut accidents and damage.
We would follow a few deliveries from slip to invoice, ask what drivers say to customers and look at how trips are paid. A driver customer-handling session plus a review of trip pay is a good first step, with scope written down for your approval.
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