Bulk bags shipped to Arkansas

Who fills bulk bags in Arkansas

Rice is a food bag

The eastern third of Arkansas is Delta: flat, low, irrigated ground along the Mississippi where rice grows alongside soybeans, cotton and corn. Rough rice mostly moves bulk from the field to dryers and mills. Milled rice and seed rice are the bagged products, and both go in new bags.

A milled rice buyer expects a food-grade bag made and baled to its food safety program, with a spout top and spout bottom and a liner if the spec calls for one. Seed rice wants a clean new Type A bag; if it is treated, keep it in a liner so treatment does not rub off on the fabric.

We do not offer used bags for rice, edible beans or any other food. A used bag is fine for sand. It is not fine for dinner.

Grain elevators along the Arkansas and Mississippi rivers also handle soybeans and corn for export downriver. Those move by barge in bulk, not in bags, but the farm-side seed and fertilizer that grew them came through FIBCs.

The northwest, the south and the northeast

Northwest Arkansas around Springdale and Rogers is poultry country, which means feed mills and the vitamin, mineral and ingredient premixes that go into feed. Premix and ingredient bags are new and often lined.

South Arkansas sits on brine deposits near El Dorado and Magnolia, which are worked for bromine. Bromine compounds leave the plants as liquids, powders and granules. For the powders, the static type is a site decision: Type B for some dry flammable powders where no flammable vapour is present, Type C only when the ground is connected every time, Type D where grounding is not practical. Follow your site's hazardous-area assessment and the bag maker's documents.

Mississippi County in the northeast corner has large steel mills. They take alloys, fluxes and other additions, and those come in heavy coated bags with four loops and a spout or flat bottom to suit the charging bin.

Timber covers much of the south and west of the state, with sawmills, paper mills and wood treaters. Sawdust, shavings, bark and wood pellets sometimes ride in bulk bags: light, bulky loads that fill a tall bag to volume long before it reaches its rated weight.

• Poultry feed premix: new bags, coated, lined, spout bottom
• Bromine-based powders: Type B, C or D per the site assessment
• Steel mill additions: coated, four loops, high SWL
• Southern pine and timber products: open or duffle top for bark, chips or fines

Interstates and the Arkansas River

I-40 crosses the state from Fort Smith through Little Rock to West Memphis, where it meets Memphis across the river. I-30 runs from Little Rock to Texarkana and on to Dallas. I-55 heads northeast from West Memphis past Blytheville into Missouri, and I-49 links Fort Smith with Fayetteville, Springdale and Bentonville. I-530 runs south from Little Rock to Pine Bluff.

The Arkansas River is navigable from the Mississippi up through Pine Bluff, Little Rock and Fort Smith on the McClellan-Kerr Arkansas River Navigation System, which continues into Oklahoma. River ports there handle fertilizer, grain and steel. The Mississippi itself carries barge traffic past Helena-West Helena.

Empty bags come in by truck. Little Rock and the I-40 towns take full trailers well. Northwest Arkansas feed mills often order by the trailer too, because poultry feed runs every week of the year.

Jonesboro, on Crowley's Ridge in the northeast, is reached on a short interstate spur off I-55 and serves the rice and soybean ground around it. Texarkana, on the Texas line, is a handy split point for loads that also serve east Texas or north Louisiana.

How the Delta crop year sets the order

A rice and soybean operation needs different bags at different points of the year. This is roughly how the Delta calendar runs; your own dates move with the weather and the river.

The point of the table is lead space, not lead time: have the bales stacked and dry before the column on the right gets busy, because a dryer or seed plant in harvest does not stop for a missing truck.

Soybean seed is the other big spring bag in the Delta, and cottonseed for planting is delinted and treated before it ships. Both go in new bags, and treated lots want a liner so the coating stays on the seed.

Calendar, quotes and pickups

Rice is planted in April and May and harvested from late summer into October, so rice seed and milling bags swing with the crop. Poultry feed is year-round. Summer heat and sun are hard on bags stored outside, so keep bales under a roof until use.

To price a load, send the product, SWL, safety factor, top, bottom, liner and the ZIP of the plant. A label photo from your current bag is often all we need.

We book empties pickups from feed mills, mills and plants statewide. Bags that held chemicals are handled separately from clean bags; tell us what they carried when you book.

Hot, wet summers matter for storage in the Delta. Keep bales stacked off concrete that sweats, out of direct sun, and use the oldest stock first.