Bucket Capacity?

Brokermike · Jun 5, 2009

I have a DK 40 Se with the standard 72" bucket and a toothbar. The toothbar lets you really heap the bucket but I was wondering if anyone had a rough idea how much the bucket holds both with and without a toothbar in relation to yards of material (1/4, 1/3, or 1/2, etc). I really have no sense of these things but after having "3 yards" of mulch delivered, either I got shorted or I have way underestimated what a yard actually is.

Thoughts?

LD1 · Jun 5, 2009

A standard 8' pickup bed filled level full in right at 3 cu yds just to give you an idea. With a toothbar you can really heap the mulch on. I would say you could probabally get 3/4 of a yard on a 6ft bucket easy enough.

How Many bucket scoops did you get.

LD1 · Jun 5, 2009

Something else you could do if you have a 5 gal bucket. Scoop a load of mulch and see how many times you can fill the 5 gal bucket. Their are about 40 buckets to a yard.

carpenter383 · Jun 5, 2009

I got two yards of mulch in my truck (full size 8ft. bed) a month or so ago, and it was pretty full. A third would probably have been spilling over the sides, and a few ft above the bedsides.

LD1 · Jun 5, 2009

carpenter383 said:
I got two yards of mulch in my truck (full size 8ft. bed) a month or so ago, and it was pretty full. A third would probably have been spilling over the sides, and a few ft above the bedsides.

You probabally got a little more than 2 yards then.

A typical P/U 8 foot bed, 5 1/2 ft width, 21" deep.
= 77 cu ft which is about 2.85 yards. Not quite 3, but close.

When I posted earlier I was using 6ft for the width, but your post prompted me to take a measurement. So I stand slightly corrected, but still very close to 3.

BTW a short bed with 6.5 box 5.5 width and 21" deep will hold 2.3 yards.

carpenter383 · Jun 5, 2009

LD1 said:
You probabally got a little more than 2 yards then.

A typical P/U 8 foot bed, 5 1/2 ft width, 21" deep.
= 77 cu ft which is about 2.85 yards. Not quite 3, but close.

When I posted earlier I was using 6ft for the width, but your post prompted me to take a measurement. So I stand slightly corrected, but still very close to 3.

BTW a short bed with 6.5 box 5.5 width and 21" deep will hold 2.3 yards.

Gotcha, I guess I got a good deal then. They don't measure very precisely when you get a load of mulch. They just gave me two scoops with a 1 yard bucket on a skid steer.

Gittyup · Jun 5, 2009

Pretty easy to calculate. Take the dimensions of your bucket in inches. Multiply the 3 dimensions together and then divide by 46656 (cu. inches in a yard). Now image the toothbar just extends the bucket out into a rectangle and repeat the calculation for those dimensions.

LD1 · Jun 5, 2009

Gittyup said:
Pretty easy to calculate. Take the dimensions of your bucket in inches. Multiply the 3 dimensions together and then divide by 46656 (cu. inches in a yard). Now image the toothbar just extends the bucket out into a rectangle and repeat the calculation for those dimensions.

That is actually easier said than done. There are quite a few more than 3 dimensions to take into acount due to the bucket not being a perfect rectangle. Most buckets have various contour angles or they are rounded. Not to mention the average scoop of mulch is a heaped load.

Gittyup · Jun 5, 2009

LD1 said:
That is actually easier said than done. There are quite a few more than 3 dimensions to take into acount due to the bucket not being a perfect rectangle. Most buckets have various contour angles or they are rounded. Not to mention the average scoop of mulch is a heaped load.

Seems pretty easy to me.... unless you need to know to +/- a few cubic inches. The amount that the bucket is short of a rectangle is pretty much compensated for by heaping.... on average anyway. How accurate does one need to be given that it's going to vary from bucket full to bucket full?