How much a yard of gravel costs, and how a ton price becomes a yard price

What to budget

No public document prices a homeowner's small delivered load, so there is no sourced figure for it. Build the budget from the figures that are published. Stone cost $8 to $17.55 a ton at the plant in the 2025 documents. Delivery is quoted per ton or per load; one 2025 bid itemized $3.10 to $9.05 a ton. A load under the supplier's minimum carries a premium. For a 6 ton driveway that puts the stone at $49 to $108 before delivery. The gravel calculator turns your own quote, per ton or per yard, into the order.

Three prices hide inside "a yard of gravel"

A gravel quote can mean the price at the quarry gate, the price dropped in your driveway, or the price spread and rolled. The public documents that print prices keep them apart, and reading them that way explains why two quotes for "the same" stone differ by double.

The US Geological Survey's producer survey is the floor. In 2025 the average value of crushed stone at the plant, the first point of sale, was an estimated $18.50 per metric ton. That is $16.78 per short ton of 2,000 lb. Construction sand and gravel averaged $14.50 per metric ton, $13.15 per short ton. The survey's own wording says those figures include mining, processing and profit and exclude transportation from the plant to the consumer. Local bids show the spread around that average. A Minnesota county bought Class 5 gravel in the pit for $8.00 to $11.25 a ton in 2025. A Texas county's pit price for No. 57 stone was $17.55 a ton, crusher run $11.75, in the same year.

What delivery adds, in the one bid that itemizes it

A 2025 joint bid by ten Pennsylvania municipalities priced No. 57 stone at $15.60 and $14.50 a ton. It then listed a separate per-ton delivery price for each town, from $3.10 to $9.05 depending on the hauler and the distance. A North Carolina city's stone bid, undated but about 2020, shows the same gap: $22.00 a ton at the plant and $26.00 delivered for No. 57. The bid also prints a flat charge for a load under the minimum. The Texas county's delivered flex base ran $28.20 to $33.00 a ton. Delivery is a per-ton or per-load charge on top of the stone. For a small residential load it can be the larger half of the bill.

Turning a ton price into a yard price

Stone is weighed when it is sold, so most quotes are per ton even when the job is figured in yards. The conversion is the weight of a loose cubic yard, which Ohio's transportation specification measures in the truck. That is 2,500 lb for No. 57 gravel and 2,700 lb for crusher run, or 1.25 and 1.35 tons. One county converts every gravel bid at 1.4 tons per yard for comparison.

Ton price	Per yard, No. 57 (1.25 t)	Per yard, crusher run (1.35 t)
$8.00 (Class 5, Minnesota pit)	$10.00	$10.80
$11.75 (crusher run, Texas pit)	$14.69	$15.86
$14.50 (No. 57, Pennsylvania bid)	$18.13	$19.58
$16.78 (US average, crushed stone)	$20.98	$22.65
$17.55 (No. 57, Texas pit)	$21.94	$23.69
$22.56 (3/4 in base, Wisconsin contract)	$28.20	$30.46
$26.00 (No. 57 delivered, North Carolina, about 2020)	$32.50	$35.10

A quote per yard from one supplier and per ton from another cannot be compared until both are in one unit. The supplier's own weight per yard is the right one to use. What a cubic yard of gravel weighs lists the published figures by stone type.

What placed stone costs on a public job

State contract averages show the other end of the scale: stone bought in thousands of tons, placed and compacted by the contractor. They ran $12 to $43 a ton across the 2025 items. Wisconsin's average unit price list for fiscal 2025 shows dense base aggregate at $22.56 a ton for the 3/4 inch grade. It shows $12.07 for 1 1/4 inch, $17.95 for 3 inch, and $14.79 for select crushed material. Indiana's 2025 weighted averages on awarded contracts put compacted aggregate No. 53 at $42.91 a ton and $72.68 a cubic yard. They put No. 73 at $35.28 a ton. Those are placed and rolled prices on highway work, not driveway quotes.

A driveway, priced from the documents

A 10 by 40 ft driveway surfaced 4 inches deep with No. 57 stone is 4.94 loose cubic yards. That is 6.2 tons at 2,500 lb per yard. At the plant prices in the 2025 bids, $8.00 to $17.55 a ton, the stone is $49 to $108. With the Pennsylvania delivery schedule's $3.10 to $9.05 a ton it is $69 to $164 delivered. Public documents carry no homeowner-size price, so these figures are a floor to compare a quote against. A supplier's minimum load or less-than-load charge may apply. So these figures are the floor the quote should be read against rather than a prediction of it. The gravel calculator takes the quote you actually get, per ton or per yard. It adds a compacted base layer if the driveway is new, and prices the whole order.

Pea gravel, river rock and decorative stone

No government bid or producer document gives a price for pea gravel or landscape river rock; the figures that circulate come from individual sellers' price lists. Decorative stone is sold by the ton and by the half-cubic-foot bag. The rock calculator converts either to coverage at the depth you choose once you enter the supplier's weight per yard and price.