Bulk Material Delivery on New Hampshire Camp Roads and Drives

Walk the route in before you order, with a tape if you have one. Bulk material delivery goes wrong for reasons you can see standing in your own driveway: a gap between two stone posts, a limb hanging over the lane, a turnaround that is soft on one side. Ten minutes with a tape settles most of them.

Here is what tends to go wrong, in the order it tends to happen.

A lane narrower than the truck needs

Give the truck a twelve foot wide route in, clear of low branches and overhead wires.

Width is the easy part to measure and the part people trust too readily. A gap that measures twelve feet at ground level can still be eleven at mirror height, because the stone wall flares or a shrub has grown out over it since last summer.

Look up as well. Camp roads and older drives close in overhead first, and a maple limb at ten feet will stop a loaded truck as firmly as a boulder would.

Ground that will not hold a loaded truck in April

This is the seasonal one. Thawed soil sitting over ground that is still frozen holds water and turns soft, and a full dump truck finds the worst of it immediately.

If the lane is still spongy underfoot, do not route the truck down it. Take the drop on firm ground near the town road and move the material in with a tractor bucket over a few evenings. A pile fifty feet from where you wanted it beats a truck sunk to the axles in your lawn.

The same goes for a lakeside lane that runs downhill to the water. A loaded truck goes down easily. Coming back up is the problem.

Nobody marked the spot, so the driver picks one

Set out a cone, a flag or a stake where the material should land, and clear the area so the body can go up.

You do not need to be home. You do need the drop spot to be obvious from the seat of a truck, and the drop-instructions field on the order is where you say so if the obvious spot is not the one you want. Keep your phone to hand: if placement looks unclear, the driver may call or text before unloading.

Material comes off in a single pile at the point you gave. The usual landing spot is the driveway or accessible ground beside it.

A pile where you park the car

Dump trucks want level, open ground to unload on. Placement behind the house is possible where truck access exists; where it does not, the load goes at the driveway or beside the street.

Think about what the pile blocks for the next week. Stone that sits in the middle of a turnaround while you work through it will cost you more aggravation than walking a wheelbarrow twenty extra feet from a corner would.

The drop itself is quick, roughly ten to fifteen minutes.

Ordering short, and what to do about it

Run the calculators before you order and round up rather than down. Ledge, soft subgrade and a crown all eat more than the flat area suggests.

If you come up short anyway, place a separate order for the extra rather than trying to amend a load already scheduled. If a job falls through entirely, the refund policy on the site covers cancellation.

Picking a date, and what the ZIP code decides

Delivery is arranged at checkout from the ZIP code you enter, and you choose the delivery date there from the weekdays offered. There is a field for where the load should be dropped, so that note travels with the order. Free delivery, where it applies, is the site's current delivery offer and is shown at checkout.

The order is then matched to a supplier in the network near that address, and an agent contacts you to confirm the exact delivery address. The confirmation names the date you chose and a local contact.

Still weighing up whether a lane will take a truck? Describe it from the contact page before you order, not on the morning of the drop. Then work out the tons, pick crushed gravel or whatever else the job needs on the products page, and set the date. The common questions cover changes and the published refund policy.

The camp road is private and the association posts a weight limit. What do I check?

Is there a stretch of spring when there is no good answer?

How long can a pile sit before it becomes a problem?

What is actually set at checkout?