Gravel Calculator
Calculate the volume and weight of gravel or crushed stone you need for a project.
How we calculate it
Volume = Area × Depth, converted to cubic yards, then Weight = Volume × Density. Density typically ranges 1.4–1.7 tons per cubic yard depending on the material. Pick a preset or enter your own.
Understanding your estimate
Quarries and landscape supply yards sell gravel by the ton, not by volume, so the number that matters when you call for delivery is the one at the bottom of this calculator, not any of the fields you typed to get there. Order light and the truck leaves your driveway half covered. Order heavy and you're paying to have someone haul the extra away. Getting from a length and width you can measure with a tape to a weight a dispatcher can act on is the whole job here.
A gravel path, worked out
Say you're covering a 20 ft by 10 ft path with 3 in of gravel, using the Standard density preset.
- Area: 20 × 10 = 200 ft².
- Depth in feet: 3 in ÷ 12 = 0.25 ft.
- Volume: 200 × 0.25 = 50 ft³, divided by 27 for cubic yards: 1.85 yd³.
- At the Standard preset's 1.55 tons per cubic yard: 1.85 × 1.55 ≈ 2.87 tons. That's the figure you give the yard.
- Switch to Light (1.4) instead and the same path needs 2.59 tons. Switch to Heavy (1.7) and it's 3.15 tons. Same 1.85 yd³ of path, three different weights depending on what you're actually filling it with.
Why density is a range, not a material name
The spec behind this calculator gives one fact about gravel density: it typically falls somewhere between 1.4 and 1.7 tons per cubic yard, without naming which specific material sits at which end of that range. We could have invented names, pea gravel here, crushed limestone there, each with its own precise-looking number, but that would be fabricating a level of precision nobody actually gave us. So the three presets, Light, Standard, and Heavy, exist to let you land somewhere sensible inside that documented range without us pretending to know your supplier's exact material better than you do. Pick one, or type your own number straight from a delivery ticket. Either way, the calculation itself never even sees which preset you picked, only the density number you land on.
Why the weight and volume don't round up
Most of the calculators here round a purchase quantity up on principle: a bag count that comes out to 97.8 becomes 98, never 97, because running short mid-job costs you a trip back to the store. Gravel breaks that pattern. Weight and volume aren't a discrete count of bags or pieces you personally carry to a register, they're continuous quantities you read off to a supplier over the phone, and the supplier is the one who decides how a few extra tenths of a ton actually get loaded, whether that's a slightly fuller truck or a note on the invoice. Rounding 2.87 tons up to 3 wouldn't protect you from anything, it would just hand the yard a number less accurate than the one you already had.
Why a ton and a tonne aren't the same number
Switch this page to metric and the weight shown changes from tons to tonnes, and those two units are not the same size wearing a different label. A US short ton is 2,000 lb; a metric tonne runs closer to 2,204.6 lb. The tonne unit didn't already exist in the conversion engine before this calculator needed it. It got added specifically because bulk material sold by weight in a metric market gets talked about in tonnes, the way a load of gravel actually gets invoiced, not in raw kilograms the way a box of screws would.
What a mistyped density won't catch itself
The density field only checks that whatever you enter is a positive, real number, not that it's a plausible gravel density. Type 15 instead of 1.5 because your finger slipped on the decimal point, and the calculator will multiply it through without blinking, handing you a weight roughly ten times too high. The documented 1.4 to 1.7 range is a guide for picking a sensible number, not a fence the field enforces. Catching a typo there is still yours to do, not ours.