How much a cubic yard weighs: gravel, dirt, sand, mulch and stone

First: volume vs weight

Landscape materials are measured two ways. A cubic yard is a volume — 27 cubic feet, a box 3 ft on each side. A ton is a weight — 2,000 lb in the US (a metric tonne is 1,000 kg, about 2,205 lb). Landscape yards often sell mulch and soil by the yard and stone by the ton, so to order stone you need to turn the volume you worked out into weight. The link between the two is the material’s density: how much one cubic yard weighs.

tons = cubic yards × density (tons per cubic yard)
cubic yards = tons ÷ density
tonnes per m³ ≈ tons per cubic yard × 1.19

The main numbers are for loose material — as it sits in the pile or the truck, which is what the yard weighs and sells. Once gravel or base is spread and compacted, the same weight takes up less room, so a cubic yard in place weighs more. The “Compacted in place” column gives that figure where there is a published one to check it against; the calculators use it the other way round, ordering enough loose stone to end up at your compacted depth.

Weight per cubic yard: typical values

For comparison, a cubic yard of water is about 202 gallons and weighs roughly 1,690 lb — a little under 0.85 tons. That is why wet soil and wet sand weigh noticeably more than the same material dry: the pore spaces are full of water.

Why soil weight varies so much

Soil is roughly half solid particles and half pore space, filled with some mix of air and water. The USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service’s educator guide to soil bulk density puts an ideal silt loam at about 1.33 g/cm³ of dry soil — which works out to roughly 1.1 tons per cubic yard before any water is counted. Add moisture and the same yard can weigh 1.3–1.4 tons; screened, fluffed topsoil straight off a loader can be lighter than that until it settles. Sandy soils run heavier than well-structured loams because they have less pore space.

In practice: if the supplier sells topsoil by the ton, ask what their conversion is for the pile you are buying today, especially after rain.

Loose, compacted — and dug out

Stone has three states worth knowing. Loose is the pile: what the yard weighs and sells. Compacted is what ends up under your driveway or patio after a plate compactor: dense-graded base such as crusher run loses roughly 20–30% of its volume as the dust packs into the gaps, so a compacted cubic yard of it weighs about 1.9 tons, while clean #57 stone only settles 5–10%. Order for the compacted depth you want times the compaction factor — the gravel calculator does it for you.

Soil works the other way when you dig it out. Undisturbed ground (engineers call it bank soil) fluffs up once it is loosened, so a hole that measured 2 cubic yards fills roughly 2.3–2.7 cubic yards of dumpster, depending on the soil — clean sand swells the least, clay the most (sometimes more than that). The excavation calculator turns the hole into loose yards, tons and loads to haul away.

What your vehicle can carry

This is where the numbers matter most. Every car and truck has a maximum combined weight of people and cargo, printed on the tire and loading information label on the driver’s door jamb (and in the owner’s manual). Many half-ton pickups are rated somewhere around 1,500–2,000 lb of payload, but trims vary a lot — check yours.

A pickup bed filled level with stone is almost always overloaded, even though it doesn’t look full. For more than about half a yard of stone or soil, delivery is usually the safer choice; dump trucks carry many tons at once, and suppliers will tell you their minimum load and short-load fee.

Worked examples

• A 12 × 16 ft shed sits on a pad a foot wider all round, 14 × 18 ft. At 4 in of compacted crusher run that is 3.11 cubic yards in place; crusher run needs about 1.25 times that loose, 3.89 cubic yards, which with 5% waste is about 6.13 tons — several pickup loads’ worth. The full breakdown is on How much gravel for a 12×16 shed base.
• A new 12 × 50 ft gravel driveway with a 6 in base and a 3 in top layer runs to around 32 tons once compaction is counted: many pickup loads if you tried to haul it yourself, a few truckloads if you don’t. See How much gravel for a 12×50 driveway.
• A 10 × 10 ft area filled 4 in deep is 1.23 cubic yards. Loose, in fill dirt that is roughly 1.5 tons; in crushed stone about 1.7. How many cubic yards of dirt or fill for a 10×10 area, 4 inches deep shows the weight by material.
• A 4 × 4 ft sandbox is a small volume but a heavy one: every cubic foot of damp sand weighs over 100 lb, and bagged play sand usually comes in 50 lb bags — see How much sand for a 4×4 sandbox.

The calculators that use these numbers

Each stone and soil calculator has a material list with these typical densities and a custom option for your supplier’s figure:

• Gravel calculator — cubic yards and tons for pads, paths and fill.
• Driveway gravel calculator — base, middle and top layers, with compaction per layer.
• French drain calculator, excavation calculator and flagstone calculator — drain stone, dirt to haul away, and flagstone by the ton.
• Pea gravel calculator and river rock calculator — decorative stone in tons and bags.
• Sand calculator — tons and bags for bedding, sandboxes and leveling.
• Topsoil calculator and cubic yard calculator — soil and fill in yards, with weight by moisture.
• Mulch calculator and compost calculator — sold by volume, so weight rarely matters except for hauling.
• Concrete bag calculator — mixed concrete is heavier than any of these, at very roughly 2 tons per cubic yard.

Tips for ordering by weight

• Ask for the supplier’s tons-per-yard figure for the exact product. Two quarries’ #57 can differ.
• Wet material weighs more. If you are paying by the ton after a week of rain, you are partly buying water.
• Round up to the supplier’s increment — many sell by the half or whole ton — rather than cutting it fine.
• For compacted layers, order by the compacted volume plus the allowance the calculator shows, not the bare volume.
• Check where the truck can tip. A loaded dump truck can crack a thin driveway slab or rut a lawn.

For what each stone is used for, see gravel types for driveways and paths.