@rosaprimula UK (Cambridge) Z8/9 Are you advising to fashion a tarp into the shape of a funnel, so that the driver can pour into the wider surface area of a funnel? I understand the concept but do not see an easy way to do that?

How do you move the sack from where the dumptruck dumps over to its tuck away on the side of the house?

@beesneeds You move a pallet with a pallet jack.

I see a couple of solutions and a problem.

First the problem. If you are going to have the Dump truck dump, by some mechanism, into the sack; you are either going to have to lower the sack so the top is only a foot or so above the ground. OR some way to raise the dump truck so that the bed in the dump position is a coupe of feet above the bag. Otherwise the material will not flow from the bed of the truck.

Resolving the above problem a piece of 3/4" plywood with sides that narrow down to the width of the bag, that is supported by sturdy legs. I suspect you could get very creative, and have the truck dump the material on the plywood, and then lift the plywood up so you could move the material into the bag.

To me the cost of the equipment would make what ever you come up with not cost effective vs the alternatives.

@krnuttle Wow, thanks for that. I did not see that problem at all. And I think your conclusion is correct. All of the increasing complexity needed to get that material into the bag is not going to be cost-effective. So to the extent that I need a place to store all of this material and that a super sack is even a viable solution for that, I need to limit myself to vendors who can ship a super sack. Then the infrastructure to load that sack is their problem, and they are in the business of doing that.

If you get the sacks delivered already full, then you just need to remember to have the pallets in place for delivery and the concrete clear from the drop spot to the side of your house so you can jack the pallet over.

@beesneeds To be clear, these are the two scenarios:

1) I buy from a vendor who puts the material into a super sack and then places that sack on a pallet for me. The pallet is then transported by a freight forwarder.

2) The vendor delivers material in a dump truck, in which case I own the pallet and the super sack, and would, of course, have him dump into the super sack when it is already on the pallet.

Ah not exactly, Using a tarp does make it easy to pull up the corners to keep a nice deep pile (when shovelling) and can also be helpful in directing the material to keep in a neat and tippable/pourable position. Not explaining this very well and in truth, there is no getting away from spadework but rather than just dumping the material onto hard standing, or, heaven forbid, lawn, a tarp does offer a certain amount of ease in funnelling the material in a useful direction, without overcoming gravity. Much better with 2 extra hands too.

As a rule, most material gets delivered already in a tonne builders bag, delivered and HIAB-ed on the drive - if we collect aggregates, sand, soil or gravel direct from wholesalers/quarry/ builder's yard, it might just get dumped in the back of our truck...and then a tarp is really useful cos you can funnel stuff off the back of a tail-gate.