The pass through query could just be:

TRUNCATE TABLE tablename

It will require permission to TRUNCATE within SQL, however. I almost NEVER let Access do much of anything with data on SQL, other than be the recipient of it, which it can do reasonably quickly, as long as you let SQL Server handle the query. If Access is doing a MAKE TABLE query, then it's accessing data from SQL fairly quickly, and all it has to do is drop the data into the local table and be done with it.