How much dirt have you seen moved by hand?

[ray66v]

I have moved that kind of dirt by hand, more than once over the years.

The last time, I shoveled it into an 8 cu. ft. dump cart like this, and pulled it with a lawn tractor.

Shop Agri-Fab 8-cu ft Poly Dump Cart at Lowes.com

If you have a loader to fill the dump cart, it would be fairly easy.

 

[sweettractors]

We have some friends that bought a new house in town. They need about 20 yards of topsoil for their backyard.

There is no way to dump the dirt in the back yard due to fences and a narrow alley.

I have a dump truck and a mountain of topsoil. They want me to dump it in their front yard and say they wheel barrow it back there. I think they are nuts as this will be around 250 wheelbarrow loads.

I want to help them but I don't want to put an insurmountable pile of dirt in front of their brand new house and then have them be upset about it. I tried explaining the volume and amount of work to them but I don't think it is registering.

It is doable if they are willing to take on the task. I have unloaded a train sand car by myself with a "sand shovel", One scoop at a time over the side and into the holding bin. Two hard days work. Ken Sweet

 

[dieselcrawler]

I hand dug a footer for a house foundation 26x60 about 10 years ago, which included leveling about half of the area inside the footer, removing about a foot on one end down to nothing at the other... using nothing more than a wheelbarrow and shovel. I'm less likely to tackle such a job now... but it can be done.

 

[TheMadOne]

I don't think it can't be done, but I'd think the few hundred for a rental of a mini ss or SCUT would be worth the time/effort.

And therein lies the crux. How much is their time worth to them?

 

[Oldoak]

Oh well, I believe all the comments prove a very good adage.

"Where there is a will, there is way"

Just a matter of how much time and physical energy someone wants to spend or how much money they have/want to spend.

 

[muddstopper]

I have to laugh at what some folks call work. Its evident that somefolks dont know what real work is. Using a wheel barrow is cheating, I used to haul 20tons of railroad ballast from the side of the track up the ballast line and into the track one shovel full at a time. I have done it with a backhoe and operator setting watching me do it and our supervisor wouldnt let him carry one bucket full. Said if he let the backhoe do all the work, then he didnt need us.

 

[buckeyefarmer]

When I was a young, we had lime delivered by dump truck and dumped. We had to shovel it into the spreader. Every yr we did this, no loader.

After building my house, I hand dug her flower bed in front, 42' x 3' x 1' deep, removed the Rocky soil, hand dug good soil from along my creek to replace it. Used a cart pulled by riding mower to move it.

When in college, worked on road crew in summer. Would shovel 2 dump truck loads a day (10 ton dump) of asphalt into potholes.

Very doable.

 

[mapper]

When I was 20-40, I moved a number of 10 yard dump truck loads of gravel, dirt, mulch, etc. Usually took me a couple of days depending on what it was and how far it had to go. Wouldn't want to do it now, but didn't think too much about it then, I could usually moan and groan my way into a good back massage from my better half

 

[Goose69]

Several months ago, our church bought an old building to use as a Kiddos church. We had to pour a slab floor due to old floor joists being rotted out, as well as other issues. We had two tri-axle dump trucks of pea gravel to move thru the door of the building.
The city allowed us to have the gravel dumped on the street of the city square, provided we had it all cleaned up before the next day.
A group of about 12 of us, with lots of shovels, 3 wheelbarrows, and one compactor, moved, leveled, and compacted all that gravel in 14 hours or so.
My entire body is hurting just remembering it. Lol.

 

[PatrickS2222]

1 cubic yard of dirt is 27 cubic feet.
20 cubic yards of dirt is 540 cubic feet.

1 cord of firewood is 4 x 4 x 8, which = 128 cubic feet.

540 cubic feet divided by 128 cubic feet is 4.2 cords.

They're talking about moving a pile of dirt equivalent to the same space as only 4 cords of wood.

Granted, dirt is heavier than wood, but geeze fellas, its not that big of a pile of dirt.

This is a standard 4 cubic foot wheelbarrow.
View attachment 504178

540/4=135 trips. Its not that much.

If each trip takes 5 minutes its only about 11 hours of work.

Get two shovels and two people to fill the barrow and take turns pushing it back there and it could be done in a weekend.

Three or four people and two-three wheelbarrows and its done in day.

I agree with a lot of what's been said, but it isn't something that's not been done before. It's also something that one should rush into, thinking it'll be only an afternoon's work. A couple dozen barrow-loads, then a rest break or some raking, and a cool drink is a sensible approach. Understand though, after a solid day's barrowing, the next few days they're going to have aches from muscles they didn't realise they had! Don't rush into it, and don't risk a heart attack.
Alternatively, a day (or at least an afternoon on a skid-steer for an inexperienced driver like me) with a narrow skid-steer I reckon is the best suggestion.