Transporting compost in a minivan? Bad idea? Really bad?

Mon Aug 08, 2011 7:27 pm

The good news is that the City of LA gives away free compost at several locations, one of which is a <10 minute drive from home.

The bad news is that I don't have a pickup truck, nor any plans to buy one any time soon.

The good news is that I have a minivan!

The bad news is that my wife is not keen on the minivan smelling like compost.

The good news is that I found The Bagster contraption at the local Home Depot, coincidentally right across the street from the compost giveaway site.

The bad news is that I can't figure out how to get a 1,000 lb. bag full of compost _out_of a minivan.

So this is my cockamamie idea:
1) Take out all the seats from my minivan
2) Lay The Bagster inside, on top of some cardboard
3) Go to the compost site and shovel it into The Bagster until full
4) Back at my house, open the rear door of the minivan and tie a rope from The Bagster's handles to some fixed anchor in my yard
5) Hit the gas

Can anyone predict what awful/awesome might happen if I try this?

Mon Aug 08, 2011 7:29 pm

and then take the van in to be detailed! It's a win-win.

Mon Aug 08, 2011 9:19 pm

If you do the dumpster bag thing, please video tape it for those of us at home

Mon Aug 08, 2011 9:37 pm

MG: thanks for the sage advice! I didn't even know those contractor bags existed. That's a much saner solution than mine

The good news is that I just ordered a 20-pack of 42-gal Demo Bags from amazon (free 2-day shipping

), and compost pick-up day is this Friday, so we'll see it all works out.

The bad news is that there will no thrilling demo/memorial video to upload to Youtube.

Regarding the quantity of compost, I can pretty much use as much as I can fit in a minivan. I have a ~4,000 sf paddock that's planted as a pumpkin patch right now, plus another 500 sf of vegetables, and I think I've purchased something like thirty 2 ft^3 bags of garden soil from Home Depot this year. That's insane. The only good thing about that bagged soil is the bags!! If I can get it for free I'll save myself a ton next season.

Mon Aug 08, 2011 9:49 pm

I would go in reverse really fast, with the back doors open, and slam on the brakes. :shock:

Eric

Mon Aug 08, 2011 9:54 pm

DoubleDogFarm wrote:I would go in reverse really fast, with the back doors open, and slam on the brakes.

Heh. My college roommate grew up on the Iron Range in northern Minnesota, and he says that was a common shortcut amongst drivers emptying their giant Euclid dump trucks into the waste pits.

It was rare, but they occasionally mis-judged the distance to the edge of the pit. :shock:

Mon Aug 08, 2011 10:02 pm

Just bring the van over. I'll get out the cutting torch and remove the top just below the windows. Will take part of the top to enclose the cab just behind the drivers seat. Now you have a pickup truck :wink:

Eric

Tue Aug 09, 2011 12:35 am

I recently filled some "construction grade" garbage bags with compost and have to tell you two things. One, compost is a lot heavier than it looks (especially when damp or wet) and those construction bags don't hold up to heavy, dead weight and fingers trying to hold on to it. I filled them 1/3 of the way and it was all I could do to lift it off the ground let alone into the back of something. I double bagged and my fingers still poked through most bags.

I would recommend a basic tarp instead of the dumpster bag due to price. Lay the tarp down in van and fill with compost. When you get home either back up to the garden site (if you can) or fill 5 gal buckets/wheelbarrow/manageable carrying device to get it to the site. I pulled a pec muscle this spring trying to drag a tarp with about 2cu yds of compost on it. I was surprised at the weight. BTW I'm 6' and 190lbs and not weak nor strong...average guy.

Tue Aug 09, 2011 12:56 am

Tue Aug 09, 2011 6:31 am

DH and I picked up 1 cubic yard of free, finished compost at the city where his mother lives, for her yard. We took empty CLEAN! plastic garbage cans (40 gallon, 2 ea.), recycling bins--rectangular and deep, 5-gallon buckets, 3-gallon buckets, and the random sturdy plastic waste basket. The staff at the compost center looked at our combination of containers and said Fine, that's *almost* a cubic yard.

DH has a Prius; I have a Honda. I'm very good at estimating the best use of space and how to pack it well. We filled all the containers and then loaded them into the cars as I "saw" them fitting in. We drove back to MIL's house, unloaded the cars, distributed most of the compost, and ran out of energy. I think a couple of 5-gallon buckets were wedged behind the front seats of my Honda, and I couldn't lift them out.

Both cars smelled fine; both cars looked fine. We drove on city streets there and back again; no spillage.

If you're dealing with mulch, that's a different creature. We were dealing with finished compost, shoveling it off of a big mountain of stuff. Maybe three years ago, in 2008 and again in 2009.

Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9

Tue Aug 09, 2011 7:47 am

I used to buy wood chips for my wildlife habitat cages and transport them in my minivan, using the method Cynthia described. I used 32-gallon plastic garbage cans ... seems like I had 6 or 8 of them ... which I purchased and used exclusively for the purpose. The guys at the wood products yard didn't have any problem filling them for me, and I was able to unload them from the van by myself when I got home.

Tue Aug 09, 2011 10:27 am

Marlingardener wrote:Gee, here in Texas we call that a "Hey y'all, watch this" moment, usually followed by a funeral.
Do you really need that much compost?
Where are you going to put it until you can spread it around?
Why not get construction grade trash bags (also available at that handy Home Depot) and fill them, heaving them into the van. When you get home, heave them out. The compost can stay in the bags until you need it (opening the bag's top to get air in) and your van won't smell.
Please let us know how this saga ends. I'm on pins and needles!

It doesn't take a lot of compost to reach 1000 lbs. I take the stable waste from the local police department stables 3-4 times a year and I dig out the oldest stuff I can get to. That usually means walking over at least 5-6 piles closer to the road to get to the older stuff. I have a truck and do this with 5 gallon buckets. I'll haul 2 buckets at a time and dump them into the bed of the truck. Each bucket will hold about 25 lbs. worth when full, so that's only between 40-50 buckets of composted material. Once home, it's just a matter of shoveling it into my wheelbarrow and making my pile.

Those heavy duty construction trash bags will work, but don't even think of filling them past 1/4 full or you may need a chiropractor.

Fri Aug 12, 2011 9:16 pm

TheWaterbug wrote:MG: thanks for the sage advice! I didn't even know those contractor bags existed. That's a much saner solution than mine

The good news is that I just ordered a 20-pack of 42-gal Demo Bags from amazon (free 2-day shipping ), and compost pick-up day is this Friday, so we'll see it all works out.

OK! The Demo Bags arrived the other day. I mis-read the package; it's only a 10-pack, so these bags are $2.19 apiece. Still, it's cheaper than buying soil.

I drove to the compost site over my lunch hour and filled six bags:

I filled them about knee-high, and they were heavy, but liftable. I probably could have fit 8-9 bags in my SUV had I planned a bit better, but once they were in they were too difficult to move, and I was getting tired and sweaty, and I still had to come back to my desk at work, so I just quit.

I'm sure I could fit ~20 bags in my minivan if I wanted to. I'll see how much I actually need after I use these six bags.

It seems like pretty decent stuff. It's a bit coarse, and there's a little bit of random junk in it, but not too much, and quite honestly not much more than there already is my existing dirt. It was steaming when it came out of the dump truck, and it's got the right smell. Here's a closeup:

That washed-out circle is a quarter, for scale. As they say on the cereal box, "Enlarged to show texture." It's much darker than it looks in the photo.

I plan on using it to mulch four 16-ft rows of corn this weekend, and then later to mulch four 8-ft rows of cole crops that just emerged. We'll see how much it covers.

I was also thinking of using it to amend some soil for a second batch of carrots, since my first batch didn't grow very long/deep.

The bag method seems like it'll work fine for all of my regular vegetable needs. If this mulch works out I'll keep thinking about how to get a big truckload for next season's pumpkin patch.

Fri Aug 12, 2011 9:23 pm

i think the question now is can your van handle that much weight (20 bags)

sure if the van smells your wife will be pissed. but if the van is broken, she will be even more pissed off.

Fri Aug 12, 2011 9:29 pm

soil wrote:i think the question now is can your van handle that much weight (20 bags)

sure if the van smells your wife will be pissed. but if the van is broken, she will be even more pissed off.

I would think so. I'll guesstimate that each bag I filled was ~75 lbs, so that'd be 1,500 lbs in the minivan, max. The van can seat 7 adult passengers plus stuff, and no sane engineer could safely assume <200 lbs per adult American