Many prospectors and miners refer to moving material in "yards of material". How many 5 gallon buckets make a cubic yard?

There are 201.97 gallons in a cubic yard. Divide that by 5.
The answer is 40.39.

So.... 40 and a half (full) 5 gallon buckets equals 1 yard.

On a typical good hard working day of hand-sluicing in a creek I can move 9 buckets of 1/2" classified, rarely 10. Just shy of 1/4 yard of 1/2" class per day.
Prior to classification it is probably another 1/8-yard that I am screening away (larger than 1/2") and pitching to a tailing pile, so maybe a little more than 1/4 yard per day in reality.
Not bad fer an old dude.
What's a typical day for you on a crick?

That's a nice steady pace at 9 or 10 buckets and I try to shoot for around that too on a good day.
I use the smaller rubber weatherproof ranch/farm style buckets and they are only about 2.5 gallons. Plastic buckets in Gunnison last until the first time you set it down in a cold creek full of wet material. The sound of snapping plastic can cause nightmares haha.
I like the smaller size and less weight on slippery rocks and I dont sit at my sluice for as long. I have to fill the buckets up more times is all. You can literally throw these rubber buckets across a creek and they just flex!

With my bazooka I've decided it's almost faster and more efficient to just classify or else I'm carrying tailings to my sluice for no reason. I only need the rich stuff in my buckets and I don't want to waste energy like that.
Carrying bucket fulls that are mostly just going into the tailings doesnt seem worthy of my calories and it's a total waste.
I won't find a fist sized nugget so why carry it and use up bucket space?
It only takes a short time to class to 1/2 so in the long run it seems faster and smarter no doubt. If I can shovel directly in that's another story and it's not often that I do.
Class material is also easier to scoop out of the bucket and the entire system seems to flow more consistent.
The new Angus will need class material anyway.

The time it takes to classify is less than what I would spend in running low grade and big rocks, not to mention the wasted time and effort.

Frankly, I have no idea since I rarely use the sluice anymore. I would be interested in figuring out a different way to calculate it though. How do folks calculate yards of material moved when using a dredge or highbanker?

Is there a rule of thumb for how much a yard of material at CC weighs on average? My best guess is somewhere between 2500 and 3000lbs.

I don't think it's possible to estimate with a suction dredge or higbanker. Weight would be difficult to estimate cubic yards as well. An excavator would be fairly easy since you could count the buckets and multiply by however many yards the bucket holds. My little gorilla ore wagon is fairly easy to estimate up at the claims.

Great questions and fun thread guys.
Here is one way we figured out how to calculate "panning a ton" of material that could help with questions here maybe... This was not counting the weight/yardage that was classified off over 1/2" but actually what was processed to equal "a yard" of material after dry classification.

Doing it by "weight" would vary per locale (clay, etc) and also differ greatly if wet, dry, or somewhere in between. It could be roughly calculated by weight 'per specific locale' I bet.