How much a cubic yard of dirt, gravel, sand, mulch or concrete weighs

Weight per cubic yard, with the source for each line

Material	Pounds per cubic yard	Short tons per yard	Basis
Crushed stone No. 57 (gravel), loose	2,500	1.25	Ohio DOT, measured in the truck
Limestone No. 57, loose	2,400	1.20	Ohio DOT
Crusher run or bank-run gravel, loose	2,700	1.35	Ohio DOT
Crusher run limestone, loose	2,500	1.25	Ohio DOT
Crushed stone or gravel base, compacted in place	4,000	2.00	Ohio DOT
Dense graded base, compacted	3,600 to 3,720	1.80 to 1.86	Wisconsin DOT research
Washed round rock, 1 in × No. 4	2,520 loose, 2,600 rated	1.3 tons per yard	Granite Rock technical report
Sand, loose, dry	2,430 to 2,670	1.22 to 1.34	FHWA Table 5-9, EPA 2,441
Sand, saturated	3,190 to 3,350	1.59 to 1.67	FHWA Table 5-9
Topsoil, dry, ideal density	2,241	1.12	Penn State and SDSU extension, 82.99 lb/cu ft
Field soil, planning figure	2,484	1.24	NRCS New Hampshire, 92 lb/cu ft
Sandy loam, loose	2,392	1.20	EPA
Wet earth with clay	2,700 to 2,970	1.35 to 1.49	EPA, 100 to 110 lb/cu ft
Chipped brush, yard waste	350	0.17	Minnesota PCA, 30 weighed trucks
Wood chips, shredded	500	0.25	EPA
Wood chips, 47% moisture	524	0.26	Cornell, 19.4 lb/cu ft
Wood chips, conservation guide	600 to 1,000	0.30 to 0.50	NRCS Washington
Concrete, bagged mix	3,780	1.89	Quikrete, 140 lb/cu ft
Concrete, ready-mix	3,915	1.96	FHWA, 145 lb/cu ft
Hot-mix asphalt, compacted	3,969	1.98	Pennsylvania asphalt association, 147 lb/cu ft

The per-yard figures are the source's per-cubic-foot value times 27 where the source gives cubic feet. Tons are short tons of 2,000 lb, the ton every US supplier quotes.

How much a yard of gravel weighs

A cubic yard of gravel weighs 2,400 to 2,700 lb loose, 1.2 to 1.35 tons. Ohio's transportation specification measures it loose in the truck: 2,500 lb for crushed stone No. 57, 2,400 for limestone No. 57 and 2,700 for crusher run or bank-run gravel. Rolled into a base it weighs about 4,000 lb per yard in place. A ton of No. 57 stone is 0.8 of a loose yard, and the gravel calculator turns yards into tons with the figure for the stone you pick.

Loose, moist and compacted are three different weights

The same stone appears twice in Ohio's tables at very different weights, and the difference is not an error. Item 410 measures gravel loose in the delivery vehicle, 2,500 lb per yard for No. 57 stone. Item 304 measures an aggregate base after it has been rolled into place, 4,000 lb per yard. Compaction squeezes the air out. Wisconsin's conversion study found dense-graded base expands 36 to 47 percent when it is loosened from its compacted state. So a cubic yard in the truck is about 0.7 of a yard in the driveway. When you buy by the yard, you buy the loose yard, and the gravel calculator orders the extra volume a compacted layer needs.

Moisture is the other variable, and for soil it is the bigger one. Dry soil at the density extension services call ideal weighs 82.99 lb per cubic foot, 2,241 lb per yard. The same soil in the field carries water in its pores. Wisconsin's study measured natural soils at 83 to 124 lb per cubic foot dry at moisture contents of 5 to 34 percent. A soil at 105 lb dry with 19 percent moisture weighs 125 lb per cubic foot wet, about 3,380 lb per yard. Sand goes from 90 to 99 lb per cubic foot loose and dry to 118 to 124 lb saturated in the federal pavement manual's table. A yard of topsoil delivered after a week of rain can weigh half again what the dry figure says.

Tons per yard, and yards per ton

Suppliers quote stone by the ton and the yard interchangeably, and the conversion is the weight per yard divided by 2,000. Loose crushed stone is 1.25 tons per yard, crusher run 1.35, and a Minnesota county uses 1.4 to compare its gravel bids. Stone is also 1.2 to 1.4 in a federal conservation guide. Going the other way, a ton of No. 57 stone is 0.8 of a loose yard, 21.6 cubic feet. A ton of crusher run is 0.74 of a yard. A producer's own technical report for washed round rock gives 2,600 lb per yard, which is 1.3 tons per yard. Its sheet prints the inverse, 1.3 yards per ton, a slip. For a 10 by 40 ft driveway topped 4 inches deep, the 4.94 loose yards of No. 57 stone weigh 6.2 tons. A quote per ton has to be multiplied by that, not by 4.94.

What a pickup can carry

One Missouri city publishes a loading note for its compost yard. By that note, a standard pickup bed holds about 3 cubic yards and a compact bed about 2, but payload runs out long before volume. The makers print maximum payloads for their best-case half-ton configurations: 2,370 lb for the 2025 Ram 1500, and 2,260 lb for the 2026 Silverado 1500. The Ram brochure's own table runs down to 1,190 lb for other configurations. The sticker in the door jamb gives the rating for the truck you actually have.

Against those numbers a yard of loose crushed stone at 2,500 lb or of dry topsoil at 2,240 lb is a full payload or more. A yard of moist soil is well over. A yard of mulch at 350 to 1,000 lb rides home easily, two if the bed is big enough. For stone and soil, a half-ton pickup is a half-yard truck, and a delivery fee costs less than an overloaded truck.

Concrete and asphalt

Concrete weighs about 140 lb per cubic foot as bagged mix and 145 as ready-mix in the federal bridge-design figure. That is 3,780 to 3,915 lb per yard, which is why a one-yard pour is 45 bags of 80 lb mix plus the water. Hot-mix asphalt compacts to about 147 lb per cubic foot, 3,969 lb per yard, and is sold by the ton. The asphalt calculator works in tons from the start and shows the equivalent yards only as a check.