Cubic Yards to Tons
There is no single number that converts cubic yards to tons, because a cubic yard is a measure of volume and a ton is a measure of weight, and every material has a different density. One cubic yard of dry bark mulch weighs around 500 to 800 pounds, while one cubic yard of wet sand weighs 3,000 to 3,500 pounds. To convert, you multiply your cubic yards by that specific material's pounds per cubic yard, then divide by 2,000.
That difference is not trivia. Suppliers sell mulch and topsoil by the yard, stone and sand by the ton, and if you order the wrong unit you either pay for four times the material you need or you overload a truck that legally cannot carry it.
Updated August 2026
A note on numbers. This page gives you dimensions, quantities and scope, not dollar figures. Material and contractor pricing varies by region, by season and by the specifics of your job, and we do not set any of it. Work out what you need here, then get quotes that can be compared to each other.
Get your volume first. Run your length, width, and depth through our free Cubic Yard Calculator, then use the chart below to turn that number into tons.
The master weight chart: cubic yards to tons by material
These are typical loose, uncompacted densities as delivered from a yard. Moisture is the biggest variable, and it moves soil and sand figures far more than most people expect. A yard of topsoil that sat through three days of rain can weigh 50 percent more than the same yard sold in August.
| Material | Pounds per cubic yard | Tons per cubic yard | Cubic yards per ton | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bark mulch (softwood), dry | 500 to 800 | 0.25 to 0.40 | 2.5 to 4.0 | Lightest common landscape material |
| Hardwood mulch, dry | 700 to 1,000 | 0.35 to 0.50 | 2.0 to 2.9 | Double-ground is denser than single |
| Mulch, rain-soaked | 1,000 to 1,400 | 0.50 to 0.70 | 1.4 to 2.0 | Can nearly double after a storm |
| Rubber mulch | 1,100 to 1,400 | 0.55 to 0.70 | 1.4 to 1.8 | Heavier per yard than wood mulch |
| Compost | 1,000 to 1,400 | 0.50 to 0.70 | 1.4 to 2.0 | Finished compost, screened |
| Screened topsoil, dry | 1,800 to 2,200 | 0.90 to 1.10 | 0.91 to 1.11 | The "about a ton a yard" rule of thumb |
| Screened topsoil, moist | 2,200 to 2,700 | 1.10 to 1.35 | 0.74 to 0.91 | Normal spring delivery condition |
| Topsoil, wet | 2,700 to 3,200 | 1.35 to 1.60 | 0.63 to 0.74 | After heavy rain, high clay content |
| Screened loam | 2,000 to 2,400 | 1.00 to 1.20 | 0.83 to 1.00 | Sand/silt/clay blend, sold moist |
| Fill dirt | 2,000 to 2,600 | 1.00 to 1.30 | 0.77 to 1.00 | Unscreened, rocks and clay raise it |
| Sand, dry | 2,400 to 2,700 | 1.20 to 1.35 | 0.74 to 0.83 | Concrete sand, masonry sand |
| Sand, wet | 3,000 to 3,500 | 1.50 to 1.75 | 0.57 to 0.67 | Water fills the voids, adds real weight |
| Pea gravel | 2,700 to 2,900 | 1.35 to 1.45 | 0.69 to 0.74 | Rounded 3/8 in stone |
| Crushed stone (#57) | 2,600 to 2,800 | 1.30 to 1.40 | 0.71 to 0.77 | Open-graded 3/4 in, drains freely |
| Crusher run / road base | 2,800 to 3,000 | 1.40 to 1.50 | 0.67 to 0.71 | Fines fill the voids, so it is denser |
| River rock | 2,600 to 2,800 | 1.30 to 1.40 | 0.71 to 0.77 | 1 in to 3 in washed stone |
| Decomposed granite | 2,700 to 3,000 | 1.35 to 1.50 | 0.67 to 0.74 | Denser when stabilized or damp |
| Asphalt millings, loose | 2,400 to 2,700 | 1.20 to 1.35 | 0.74 to 0.83 | Roughly 3,600 lb/yd once compacted |
| Concrete, wet ready-mix | 3,900 to 4,100 | 1.95 to 2.05 | 0.49 to 0.51 | Heaviest thing on this list |
| Broken concrete rubble | 2,000 to 2,600 | 1.00 to 1.30 | 0.77 to 1.00 | Depends entirely on how it is broken |
| Snow, fresh and dry | 100 to 200 | 0.05 to 0.10 | 10 to 20 | Why a yard of snow is nothing |
| Snow, packed or wet | 500 to 900 | 0.25 to 0.45 | 2.2 to 4.0 | Roof-load territory once it drifts |
The honest caveat. Treat every one of these as a range, not a constant. Moisture content is the main swing factor for soil, sand, and mulch. Compaction and grading matter for stone: crusher run with fines packs tighter than open-graded #57, so it weighs more per yard even though the rock is identical. Material grade matters too, since a screened topsoil with 20 percent sand weighs differently from one with 20 percent clay. When a supplier gives you their own number for their own pile, use theirs.
How to convert cubic yards to tons, both directions
The math is one multiplication and one division. You only need the material's pounds per cubic yard from the chart above.
Cubic yards to tons:
tons = cubic yards x (pounds per cubic yard) / 2,000
Tons to cubic yards:
cubic yards = tons x 2,000 / (pounds per cubic yard)
Worked example, yards to tons
You need 6 cubic yards of #57 crushed stone for a French drain and the quarry prices by the ton.
- Pounds per cubic yard for #57 stone: use 2,700 (midpoint of 2,600 to 2,800).
- 6 x 2,700 = 16,200 pounds.
- 16,200 / 2,000 = 8.1 tons.
Order 8 to 8.5 tons. Stone settles and you always lose some to the bottom of the trench, so rounding up half a ton is normal.
Worked example, tons to yards
Your supplier quotes 5 tons of crusher run and you want to know if that fills your driveway repair.
- Pounds per cubic yard for crusher run: use 2,900.
- 5 x 2,000 = 10,000 pounds.
- 10,000 / 2,900 = 3.45 cubic yards.
At 4 inches deep, 3.45 yards covers about 279 square feet. If your repair area is 12 by 30 feet (360 sq ft), 5 tons is short and you need closer to 4.5 yards, or about 6.5 tons.
How much does 1 yard of dirt weigh?
For screened topsoil in normal, slightly moist condition, budget 2,200 to 2,700 pounds per cubic yard, so a little over one ton. Bone-dry screened topsoil in late summer can drop to 1,800 pounds. Wet clay-heavy fill after a storm can hit 3,200.
That range is the whole reason people misjudge dirt deliveries. If you assume a yard of dirt weighs a ton and your supplier's pile is soaked, you are 30 to 60 percent over your estimate on both weight and cost.
Two practical consequences:
- If you are paying by the ton, buy dirt dry. You are literally paying for water when you buy wet soil by weight. Soil sold by the yard has the opposite problem: wet soil is heavier to move but you get the same volume.
- If you are hauling it yourself, assume wet. Overloading is worse than making a second trip.
How much does a yard of gravel weigh?
Most landscape gravel lands between 2,600 and 3,000 pounds per cubic yard, so roughly 1.3 to 1.5 tons. The variation inside that band comes down to how the stone is graded:
- Open-graded stone like #57 has no fines, so there are big air voids between the rocks. Lower weight per yard, around 2,600 to 2,800 pounds.
- Dense-graded stone like crusher run or ABC has stone dust filling those voids. Higher weight per yard, around 2,800 to 3,000 pounds.
- Rounded stone like pea gravel and river rock nests reasonably tight and sits at 2,600 to 2,900 pounds.
Wet gravel adds roughly 100 to 200 pounds per yard, much less of a jump than wet soil, because the stone itself does not absorb water. The water just sits in the voids.
If you are pricing a gravel project rather than converting one, the gravel calculator handles depth and area in one step. For the depth to put into it, how many inches of gravel for a driveway separates the base, middle and top layers by soil type.
Coverage: how far one cubic yard actually goes
A cubic yard is 27 cubic feet. Spread it thinner and it covers more ground. This is how people actually plan a project, so it is worth pinning to memory.
| Depth | Square feet covered by 1 cubic yard | Cubic yards needed per 100 sq ft |
|---|---|---|
| 1 inch | 324 sq ft | 0.31 yd |
| 2 inches | 162 sq ft | 0.62 yd |
| 3 inches | 108 sq ft | 0.93 yd |
| 4 inches | 81 sq ft | 1.23 yd |
| 6 inches | 54 sq ft | 1.85 yd |
Typical depths in practice: mulch goes 2 to 3 inches (3 inches for weed suppression, 2 inches around shallow-rooted plants), decorative gravel goes 2 to 3 inches, a gravel walking path goes 4 inches, and a gravel driveway base goes 4 to 6 inches compacted.
The mulch calculator does this depth math for beds with odd shapes, and the gravel calculator does it for paths and drives.
Truck capacity: what you can actually haul
This is the section that saves people from bent leaf springs and blown tires. Pickup capacity is limited by weight, not by how much fits in the bed. A 6.5-foot bed holds about 1.7 to 2 cubic yards level full, but almost no half-ton pickup can legally carry 2 yards of anything heavier than mulch.
Your truck's actual payload is on the yellow sticker in the driver's door jamb, and it includes you, your passengers, your tools, and your fuel. Subtract 300 to 500 pounds from the sticker number before you do any material math.
| Vehicle | Realistic payload | Stone or wet soil | Dry topsoil | Bark mulch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Half-ton pickup (F-150, 1500) | 1,000 to 1,700 lb | 0.4 to 0.6 yd | 0.5 to 0.8 yd | 1.5 to 2 yd (bed volume limits it) |
| Three-quarter-ton (F-250, 2500) | 2,200 to 3,500 lb | 0.8 to 1.2 yd | 1.0 to 1.6 yd | Bed volume limits it |
| One-ton dually (F-350, 3500) | 3,800 to 5,500 lb | 1.4 to 2.0 yd | 1.7 to 2.5 yd | Bed volume limits it |
| Small dump trailer (7x12, 10k GVWR) | 5,000 to 7,000 lb | 1.8 to 2.5 yd | 2.2 to 3.2 yd | 4 to 6 yd |
| Single-axle dump truck | 10,000 to 14,000 lb | 3.5 to 5 yd | 4 to 6 yd | 8 to 12 yd |
| Tandem-axle dump truck | 24,000 to 30,000 lb | 8 to 11 yd | 10 to 13 yd | 15 to 18 yd |
Read that top row again. A half-ton pickup should not carry a full cubic yard of wet topsoil or stone. A single yard of wet topsoil is roughly 3,000 pounds, which is close to double what most half-tons are rated for. Yard operators will happily drop a full yard in your bed if you ask, because the liability is yours.
Two more field notes:
- Loader buckets are often calibrated in yards, so "one scoop" usually means one yard. Ask before they drop it.
- Dump-truck deliveries are quoted in yards for mulch, compost, and soil, and in tons for stone, sand, and base. Confirm which unit a quote uses before you compare two suppliers.
Bagged versus bulk: the crossover math
How many bags make a cubic yard? A cubic yard is 27 cubic feet, so:
| Bag size | Bags per cubic yard |
|---|---|
| 0.75 cu ft | 36 bags |
| 1 cu ft | 27 bags |
| 1.5 cu ft | 18 bags |
| 2 cu ft (standard mulch bag) | 13.5 bags |
| 3 cu ft | 9 bags |
The number to remember is 13.5 two-cubic-foot bags per cubic yard. That is the standard mulch bag at every big-box store.
How much is a bag of mulch? A 2 cubic foot bag of hardwood or dyed mulch weighs about 30 to 40 pounds dry, more if the pallet has been rained on. To compare it against bulk, multiply the shelf price by 13.5 and you have the bagged price of a cubic yard. Do that once and the gap is startling: bagged mulch works out to roughly double bulk mulch by volume.
Bagged topsoil is usually sold by weight rather than volume. A 40-pound bag of topsoil holds roughly 0.6 to 0.75 cubic feet, so it takes about 36 to 45 bags to make a cubic yard. Multiply the bag price by 40 and compare that to the yard's bulk price for screened topsoil, and bagged comes out several times higher. Soil is the material where buying in bags punishes you hardest, because it is heavy, cheap in bulk, and the bag is doing most of the work.
Where bulk beats bags
Bulk material is cheaper per yard but carries a flat delivery fee within the yard's normal radius, and that fee is what decides the whole question. The break-even is simple, and it takes three numbers you can get in two phone calls:
break-even yards = delivery fee / (bagged price per yard - bulk price per yard)
To fill it in: get the bag price from any big-box store and multiply by 13.5 for the bagged price per yard, then call one landscape supply yard and ask two questions, the bulk price per yard and the delivery charge to your address. Divide and you have your own crossover point in cubic yards.
For hardwood mulch, that crossover typically lands right around three cubic yards. Under it, bags win once you count the fee. Over it, bulk wins and the gap widens fast, because the delivery fee is flat while the per-yard saving keeps multiplying. By the time you are ordering ten yards, the saving is many times the delivery fee.
Bags still win in three situations regardless of the math: you have nowhere to dump a pile, you are spreading over several weekends, or your total need is under a yard and a half.
Worked example: a 400 sq ft mulch bed, start to finish
A front bed measures 400 square feet and you want mulch 3 inches deep.
Step 1, volume. 400 sq ft x (3 / 12 ft) = 100 cubic feet. 100 / 27 = 3.7 cubic yards.
Step 2, weight. Dry hardwood mulch at 850 pounds per yard: 3.7 x 850 = 3,145 pounds, or 1.57 tons. If it rains on the pile before you spread it, expect closer to 2.2 tons.
Step 3, hauling. At 3,145 pounds, that is two trips in a half-ton pickup even for mulch, because two yards of mulch is roughly the level-full bed volume. One trip in a three-quarter-ton with a heaped bed. One delivery if you order it dropped.
Step 4, bags. 100 cubic feet / 2 = 50 bags. Fifty bags is four to five trips in a car or two in a pickup, all of it your own labor, and the plastic to dispose of afterward.
Step 5, bulk. 4 yards, rounded up, plus one delivery fee. One drop in the driveway, no hauling, and no bags to flatten.
At 3.7 yards this lands right at the crossover, so the two routes come out close to a tie on money, which means you should decide it on hauling instead. Bulk pulls ahead the moment the bed grows, or the moment you add a second bed. Bags pull ahead if your driveway cannot take a pile.
How suppliers quote each material, and what moves the number
Prices vary by region and by how far you are from the source, so the useful thing to know is the unit each material is quoted in and what makes one yard cost more than another. Get every quote in the unit in the right-hand column, or you cannot compare two yards against each other at all.
| Material | Quoted by | What makes it cost more or less |
|---|---|---|
| Bark or hardwood mulch | Yard | The cheapest mulch on the lot. Undyed, single-ground, locally sourced is the low end |
| Dyed mulch | Yard | Above plain bark, because of the colorant and the extra processing |
| Compost | Yard | Similar to dyed mulch. Certified or screened compost costs more than yard-waste compost |
| Screened topsoil | Yard | Screening is what you are paying for. Ask the screen size and whether it is amended |
| Fill dirt | Yard | The cheapest material on this entire list, because it is unscreened and often a byproduct |
| Pea gravel | Ton | Rounded and washed, so it costs more than an equivalent crushed product |
| #57 crushed stone | Ton | Mid-range. Washed, so above crusher run |
| Crusher run | Ton | The cheapest stone, because it includes the fines rather than washing them out |
| River rock | Ton | The most expensive item here by a wide margin. It is graded, washed and often trucked a long way |
| Decomposed granite | Ton | Above crushed stone, and heavily dependent on how far you are from a granite source |
Two things move any of these more than the material choice itself: haul distance from the quarry or yard, which is why the same stone costs very differently in two states, and the load size, since a small load pays the same delivery charge as a large one.
Notice the pattern: soft organic material is priced by the yard, hard mineral material is priced by the ton. That is exactly where the cubic-yard-to-ton confusion bites, since a landscape project usually needs both.
If your project involves a poured slab, the same volume math applies but the price structure is different, and concrete cost per yard covers it. For a stone-and-sand base under pavers, paver patio cost walks through the layered depths.
Frequently asked questions
How many cubic yards are in a ton?
It depends on the material. For most gravel and crushed stone, one ton is about 0.7 cubic yards. For dry topsoil it is about 1 cubic yard, and for dry bark mulch it can be 2.5 to 4 cubic yards. Always look up the specific material rather than using a single conversion.
How much does 1 yard of dirt weigh?
Screened topsoil in normal moist condition weighs about 2,200 to 2,700 pounds per cubic yard. Bone-dry it can drop to 1,800 pounds and soaked it can reach 3,200 pounds. That is why suppliers who sell dirt by the ton quote different amounts on different days.
How much does a yard of gravel weigh?
Between 2,600 and 3,000 pounds, which is 1.3 to 1.5 tons. Dense-graded material with stone dust in it (crusher run, road base) sits at the top of that range. Open-graded stone with no fines, like #57, sits at the bottom.
How much is topsoil a yard?
Bulk screened topsoil is quoted per cubic yard picked up, with delivery charged separately as a flat fee, so always ask for both numbers. Unscreened fill dirt costs a fraction of screened topsoil and is fine anywhere you are only filling volume. Bagged topsoil works out to several times the bulk price per yard once you multiply the bag price by the 36 to 45 bags it takes to make a yard, so it only makes sense for small jobs.
How much is a bag of mulch, and how many do I need?
A standard 2 cubic foot bag weighs 30 to 40 pounds, and it takes 13.5 bags to equal one cubic yard, so multiply the shelf price by 13.5 to compare it against a bulk yard price. One bag covers about 8 square feet at 3 inches deep, or about 12 square feet at 2 inches.
Can my pickup carry a cubic yard?
Only if the material is light. A half-ton pickup with 1,500 pounds of usable payload can carry roughly half a yard of stone or wet soil, but it can carry close to two yards of dry mulch before the bed fills up. Check the yellow payload sticker in your door jamb and subtract the weight of you and your gear.
Why do suppliers sell some materials by the yard and others by the ton?
Loose organic material like mulch and compost varies too much in weight to price fairly by the ton, since a rained-on pile would cost you more for the same coverage. Mineral material like stone and sand is stable in density and easier to weigh on a truck scale, so tons is the honest unit there.
Does compaction change the conversion?
Yes, and significantly. Loose asphalt millings run about 2,500 pounds per cubic yard, but once rolled and compacted the same material is closer to 3,600 pounds per cubic yard in place. If you are calculating base material for a driveway, order by loose volume and expect to lose 15 to 25 percent of the depth to compaction.
The short version
Cubic yards measure how much space material takes up. Tons measure how heavy it is. The bridge between them is the material's density, and that number ranges from about 500 pounds per yard for dry bark mulch to about 4,000 pounds per yard for wet concrete.
Get your volume right first, convert with the chart, then check the weight against what your truck or your supplier's truck can actually carry. Run the numbers with the Cubic Yard Calculator and you will not be the person standing in a driveway next to twice as much stone as the job needed.
