A rapid volume measurement method for a bulk cargo was proposed to overcome the shortcomings of traditional bulk measuring systems in poor adaptability for yard environments, longer complete time, lower efficiency and complex operation. Then a volume measuring system consisting of a 2D laser scanner, a difference GPS and an attitude measuring system was designed. For this system, the laser scanner was used to measure dynamically the surface geometry information of a bulk, the attitude measuring system was taken to measure the space attitude data of the scanner in real time and the GPS was utilized to obtain the 3D position of the scanner in measuring processing. Finally, the data fusion was used to calculate 3D point cloud of the bulk cargo and to obtain the volume of the bulk cargo. On the basis of the feature of single scanned outline, an algorithm to extract the down edge of the bulk cargo effectively was proposed to remove the measurement error from ground point cloud and a projection triangulation volume algorithm was used to calculate the volume of bulks point cloud. Experiment shows that the system could complete the measurement of bulk cargo with a size of 69 m3 in 30 s, the average relative error is 0.42% and the repeated measurement error is 0.41%. In a reality bulk measurement, the measurement on about 31 500 m3 takes less than 10 min, and the average repeated measurement error for 4 coal bulks is 0.74%. It shows that the system could measure the volume of bulk cargo quickly and easily on maintaining accurate measurement.