Cubic Yards to Tons: Gravel, Sand, Topsoil and Mulch Conversion Chart

A cubic yard of gravel or crushed stone weighs about 1.4 tons, or 2,800 lb. Topsoil runs about 1.1 tons, sand 1.3 to 1.5, and wood mulch only 0.4 to 0.5. Multiply cubic yards by the material’s tons per yard to get the order: 5 yards of gravel is 7.0 tons, 5 yards of topsoil is 5.5 tons. Divide tons by the same figure to go back to yards.

Length (ft)

Width (ft)

Depth (in)

Compaction buffer

Decorative / path (5%)Driveway / load-bearing (15%)Custom

Density (tons / cu yd)

Price per ton ($ (optional))

Cubic yards

0.93 cu yd

With buffer

0.97 cu yd

Tons (with buffer)

1.4 tons

Estimated cost

—

Includes a 5% compaction buffer. Order in whole or half-yard increments. Round up to the nearest your supplier offers.

Tons per cubic yard, material by material

The first column holds the figure this site’s calculators default to where one of them covers the material, and a mid-range planning figure where none does, so a number read off the chart and a number from the widget above will agree. The range column is what you will actually meet at the supplier, and the reasons for the spread are further down.

Material	Tons per cubic yard used here	Typical range	Pounds per cubic yard
Gravel and crushed stone (3/4 in minus, #57, crusher run)	1.4	1.2 to 1.6	2,800
Pea gravel	1.4	1.2 to 1.4	2,800
River rock	1.4	1.3 to 1.5	2,600 to 3,000
Limestone screenings, stone dust	1.5	1.4 to 1.6	3,000
Sand, concrete or mason	1.35	1.3 to 1.5	2,600 to 3,000
Topsoil	1.1	1.0 to 1.2	2,200
Wood mulch, shredded or chipped	0.45	0.4 to 0.5	800 to 1,000
Hot-mix asphalt, compacted in place	1.96	1.9 to 2.0	3,915
Concrete, placed	2.0	about 2.0	4,000

Two of those materials are never sold loose by the yard. Asphalt and concrete are on the chart because people search for them, and because they mark the top of the scale: a yard of placed concrete weighs four to five times a yard of bark mulch, and the word yard on its own tells you nothing about either. Everything above the topsoil line is mineral and sits between 1.2 and 1.6; the two with organic matter in them, topsoil and mulch, sit at or below 1.2. That split is the first thing to check when a quoted weight looks wrong.

The formula, and the same formula run backwards

Tons equals cubic yards times tons per cubic yard. Cubic yards equals tons divided by tons per cubic yard. For a supplier who quotes in pounds, or for a pickup’s payload rating, multiply the tons by 2,000. When the volume step itself is the work, several beds or a round pad, the cubic yard calculator handles it with the same densities as this chart, so the tonnage it reports and the tonnage here agree.

The widget’s bed shows the forward direction. Ten feet by 10 ft at 3 inches deep is 300 divided by 324, or 0.93 cubic yards, and at 1.4 tons per yard that is 1.30 tons of stone before any allowance. The widget adds its 5 percent decorative buffer first, taking the volume to 0.97 yards, and then converts, which is why it reports 1.4 tons rather than 1.3. Buffer first, density second, in that order, always.

The backward direction is the one people reach for at the phone. A quarry that says its tandem truck carries about 10 tons, a figure that varies by truck and by state weight limits, is offering 10 divided by 1.4, or 7.14 cubic yards of gravel, which at 4 inches deep covers 578 square feet. The same truck filled with topsoil carries 10 divided by 1.1, or 9.09 yards. And a scale ticket reading 3.62 tons of 3/4 inch stone is 3.62 divided by 1.4, or 2.59 yards, which at 4 inches covers 210 square feet, so if the base you measured was 250 square feet you now know why the pile ran out a wheelbarrow short.

One to ten cubic yards at 1.4 and at 1.1

The two columns are the gravel and topsoil defaults. For sand at 1.35, limestone screenings at 1.5 or mulch at 0.45, multiply the yards by the chart figure directly; the arithmetic is one step and the rounding is yours.

Cubic yards	Tons of gravel at 1.4	Tons of topsoil at 1.1
1	1.40	1.10
2	2.80	2.20
3	4.20	3.30
4	5.60	4.40
5	7.00	5.50
6	8.40	6.60
7	9.80	7.70
8	11.20	8.80
9	12.60	9.90
10	14.00	11.00

Going the other way, from the tons on a ticket or a truck rating to the yards you can spread:

Tons	Cubic yards of gravel at 1.4	Cubic yards of topsoil at 1.1
1	0.71	0.91
2	1.43	1.82
3	2.14	2.73
4	2.86	3.64
5	3.57	4.55
6	4.29	5.45
7	5.00	6.36
8	5.71	7.27
9	6.43	8.18
10	7.14	9.09

One row is worth memorizing. Seven tons of gravel is exactly 5.00 cubic yards, so 5 yards is 7 tons, 10 yards is 14 tons, and a 14 ton load is 10 yards. That anchor is enough to sanity-check almost any gravel quote in your head, and it fails usefully: a quote of 14 tons for a 12 yard job means the supplier is using 1.17, lighter than any stone on the chart, so either the product is an unusually light decorative rock or the quote needs a second look.

Moisture: why topsoil and sand swing 10 to 20 percent

Density is weight over volume, and water adds weight without adding volume because it fills the voids between particles rather than pushing them apart. How much water a material can hold in its voids decides how far its density can swing, and that is the whole difference between the gravel row and the topsoil row.

Washed crushed stone has large, open voids that drain as fast as they fill. Stone that sat under rain overnight carries a few percent of water by weight and sheds most of it on the truck, so the gravel figure barely moves with the weather. Sand has far smaller pores, and capillary action holds water in them against gravity; that is why a bucket of wet sand is a chore and a bucket of wet gravel is not, and why the sand range runs from 1.3 to 1.5. Topsoil adds organic matter, which soaks up water like a sponge and holds it for days. Dry, screened topsoil at 1.0 tons per yard can be 1.2 after a wet week, the full 20 percent, and unscreened soil with clods and roots holds even more.

The practical rule follows the direction of the purchase. Buying by the ton to fill a volume you measured, order against the wet figure, because a wet ton is fewer yards: 5 tons of damp topsoil at 1.2 is 4.17 yards, not the 5 yards the dry figure promises. Buying by the yard and hauling it yourself, use the wet figure for the opposite reason: a half-ton pickup rated around 1,000 lb of payload is over its limit with half a yard of wet soil. The topsoil calculator exposes the density as an input rather than fixing it, precisely so you can type in the number for the soil in front of you.

Why the quarry sells by the ton and the mulch yard by the cubic yard

The unit a supplier quotes in is set by how the material gets measured on its way out of the gate, not by what is convenient for you.

A quarry weighs every truck. The loader fills it, the truck rolls onto a scale, the scale subtracts the truck’s empty weight, and the ticket prints a net figure in tons to two decimal places. That takes seconds, needs no judgement, and is the same method the quarry uses for road contractors buying hundreds of tons, so gravel, crushed stone, screenings and quarry sand are quoted by the ton almost everywhere. The gravel calculator reports both units because you measure the hole in yards and the quarry bills the stone in tons, and the conversion between them has to happen somewhere.

A mulch yard has no reason to weigh anything. Wood mulch is so light that a ton is an unhelpfully large unit, and so absorbent that the same pile can weigh twice as much on Monday as it did on Friday. Selling it by weight would mean the price of a yard depended on the weather. So mulch is loaded by the bucket, and a loader bucket holds a known volume, commonly 1 to 3 cubic yards depending on the machine, which the yard treats as its unit. The mulch calculator works in yards and bags for that reason and never asks for a density at all.

Topsoil sits between the two and is sold both ways: by the ton at a quarry or sand pit that happens to stock it, by the yard at a landscape supply that loads it with the same bucket as the mulch. Ask which before you quote a quantity, because 3 yards and 3 tons of topsoil are not the same pile. Asphalt is always by the ton, since the plant weighs the truck and the paver’s crew places it by weight. Concrete is always by the cubic yard, even though the plant batches it by weight, because a slab is specified by its volume and nobody has ever ordered a ton of ready-mix.

The compaction buffer is a volume adjustment, not a density one

The buffer in the gravel widget and the density figure in the chart answer two different questions, and the most common way to get a gravel order wrong is to let one do the other’s job.

Density answers what the loose stone weighs on the truck. The quarry scale weighs it loose, so the loose density is the right one to convert with, and it stays the right one whether the stone will later be compacted under a driveway or left loose in a flower bed. The buffer answers how much extra loose volume you need so that, after a plate compactor has driven the particles closer together, the layer still finishes at the depth you measured for. Stone under a driveway typically loses something like 10 to 20 percent of its loose volume to compaction and traffic; stone in a decorative bed loses almost none, which is why the widget offers 15 percent for load-bearing work and 5 percent for decorative.

The order of operations is volume, then buffer, then density. The widget’s 0.93 yard bed becomes 0.97 yards at 5 percent and 1.4 tons at 1.4; switch the buffer to load-bearing and the same bed shows 1.06 yards and 1.5 tons. The density never changed. What people do instead is raise the density to 1.6 or 1.7 to allow for compaction, which gets a similar tonnage on a small job and the wrong one on a large job, and it also corrupts the figure for next time. Keep the density as the supplier’s loose figure and put the allowance in the buffer where it belongs. The gravel for a driveway guide applies that sequence to driveway bases at the common depths, and the material waste factors guide explains why compaction, settling and cutting waste are three allowances rather than one.

Asphalt and concrete: the two-ton materials

Hot-mix asphalt is 145 lb per cubic foot once it has been rolled, and 145 times 27 is 3,915 lb, which is where the 1.96 tons per yard on the chart comes from. That density is the finished, compacted one. The mix arrives from the plant hot and loose at a lower density, gives up a good share of that loose volume under the roller, and is billed by the ton for the weight the plant loaded, so the conversion runs from the compacted volume you measured up to tons, not down from a loose pile. The asphalt calculator uses that 145 lb figure and lets you substitute the plant’s own number for its mix.

Concrete is about 4,000 lb to the yard in place, 2.0 tons, and the weight matters for two reasons that have nothing to do with ordering a truck. A 12x12 slab at 4 inches is 1.78 cubic yards, about 7,100 lb of material, which is the honest reason a bag pour past a yard is a two-person job and a ton of lifting. And a slab’s weight bears on whatever is under it, which is why a shed slab over soft ground gets a compacted base before the concrete, not after.

Reading the chart against a delivery ticket

A scale ticket carries three weights: gross, tare and net, and only the net is stone. Divide the net by the chart figure and you have the yards that came off the truck. If that number is noticeably smaller than what you ordered in yards, the supplier converted with a heavier density than 1.4, either because the product is heavier, a crusher run at 1.5 or 1.6, or because the stockpile was wet. Neither is a dispute; both are a reason to ask for the product’s density next time and to type it into the calculator in place of the default.

The units themselves, cubic feet to yards, the 324 divisor that turns feet and inches into yards, and the roofing squares and board feet that have nothing to do with weight, are in the construction unit conversions guide. This page is only the part where the material decides the answer.