Steve,

You sure they're nothing but fines? Did you go over there and visualize them? If so and they're open on Saturday morning I'll bring my Ford Ranger over but you'll need to see if they're willing to fill a yard at a time....

Tom

Hi Tom,

Yeah, I went over and tallked to the guy that runs the big front-end loader, who stacks, waters and turns the huge piles. He pointed out where the limbs and stuff go into the machine that shreds it, and there's a huge steel mesh tumbler basket in the machine that spins and sifts it, then it comes pouring out the chute. He said that it was fines, that they couldn't call it "compost" due to legal restrictions, even though they "cook" it for a few weeks.

They have a huge concrete area that they make the long piles in, and there's a whiteboard in the trailer that tracks the date first piled up, how many days watered, and when the pile was turned.

I think the best we could hope for would be for them to dump the 5cy scoop out of the way and let us haul it off in sections, but if the guy isn't too busy, maybe we could give him a tip and he'd dump a portion in the back of your truck. We'd still have to offload it by hand, er, shovel, though.

There's no phone out there, you have to go out and see if they have any cured. They used to cure it to 140 degrees for 5 to 7 weeks, but commercial demand is so great that it's only getting three weeks.

Maybe if we got five trucks at once, we could pull it off. Park them in pairs tail-to-tail, then the fifth truck gets filled with what spilled. :p

I can't go out there Saturday, but will check next week to see how accommodating they would be to our dilemma.

Ok, at the advice of a friend, I'm checking into rental dump trailers that can hold 5cy. So far, I have a quote for $85 +tax per day, BUT... if we rent it on Friday it doesn't have to be back until Monday.

We could all get together and make a group buy (I want a whole 5cy for myself! ) and use the trailer all weekend, splitting the rental and gas-for-the-truck-which-is-towing-it costs.

My problem is i dont have enough space to store that much.I dont mind paying 3 bucks a bag for the stuff,i just wish one place had everything i needed for the mix.Oh i got a perfect idea steve can store everything at his place and i can just buy it from him.lol.

kirk

HA! :)

That's why I mentioned folks getting together and splitting a load, like we were going to do with the vermiculite.

(Hey, is the Prosource One in Plant City open weekends? Can you just walk in?)

Too labor intensive to load by hand. Your idea about the 5CY trailer makes more sense but at $85, even for three days, I'd see what somebody with a dump truck would charge you to deliver it. I only need one yard per year in the fall for all my containers so I'm out, even at $22 a yard from Cypress Creek or Mulch Express they have a small front-loader and dump it right in the bed of my truck.

Prosource One isn't open on the weekends, but they will sell to the public. That's where I get all my nursery containers but you have to buy in bulk....

Tom, they take the front end loader and dump it in the truck (or trailer, in our case.) The reason I was pricing dump trailers was so we wouldn't have to empty it by hand.

I also figured if I were going to do this, there was no reason not to get a group together and split the cost of the trailer, and everyone could take advantage of it.

If all we have is one pickup truck, I doubt they will sell to us. The bucket on this front end loader holds 5 cubic yards, which is why they sell it in that quantity. In my message above, I was pondering having two pickup trucks parked tail-to-tail, and the front end loader filling both at once, since the bucket on the loader is so big.

Someone else on the forums hired a dump truck to deliver compost and it was $150. I believe that was in Central Florida. I still haven't checked other places for quotes on a dump trailer.

Yikes! $150 sounds pricy. I can get the local topsoil place to deliver a 5 yard load of cypress mulch for $25, fines can't weigh much more...seems you have several Dump companies over there, I'd check it out. Two trucks back-to-back won't work either with a 5yd loader; they'd get all scratched up as it won't be possible to keep the load within the truck beds regardless of how careful the operator is. I know you're planning a fairly large operation but there aren't too many of us home growers that need a yard, and I don't have any place to store it until fall...I was just trying to help you out.

Thanks Tom!

I'll do some asking around. If I could get someone to grab a load of this for $25, I'd be ecstatic. Would you mind emailing me the name of that topsoil place? My hotmail address is virtualuso@

Thanks!