Cubic Yard and Truck Load Calculator

The published figures for gravel, by the ton are on the gravel calculator, with the byline, the publication date and the caveats that go with them. They are not repeated here, because the same table on two pages is worth less than one table you can find.

This site publishes no price of its own. Why, and what that means for these figures.

Everyone knows the 80,000 lb figure. Read it with the two limits printed immediately after it and it stops being the answer:

The maximum gross vehicle weight shall be 80,000 pounds except where lower gross vehicle weight is dictated by the bridge formula.

The maximum gross weight upon any one axle, including any one axle of a group of axles, or a vehicle is 20,000 pounds.

The maximum gross weight on tandem axles is 34,000 pounds.

A truck cannot weigh more than its axles are allowed to carry. So add up what each group is permitted and you get a ceiling that has nothing to do with 80,000:

The tandem dump truck that delivers to houses tops out at 54,000 lb gross, not 80,000. That is 68% of the number everybody quotes, and it is the number that decides how much material is on the lorry.

And in the other direction, the five-axle combination's axle limits add up to 88,000 lb, which paragraph (b) then takes back down to 80,000. Two limits, pulling opposite ways, and the binding one changes with the truck.

These figures also carry no slack:

The weights in paragraphs (b), (c), (d), and (e) of this section shall be inclusive of all tolerances, enforcement or otherwise, with the exception of a scale allowance factor when using portable scales (wheel-load weighers).

Every figure in that table is gross: the whole vehicle, loaded, on the scale. What you are buying is the difference between gross and the empty weight of that specific truck.

Tare weight is a property of one vehicle. It is on the plate or the registration, it moves with the body, the tailgate, the liner, the tool boxes and the fuel in the tank, and no honest range covers a steel body and an aluminium one. This page will not print one.

So the calculator asks for it, and until it has one it gives you the ceiling instead: the most material that could be on any legal load, if the truck weighed nothing. That is a real bound and it is often lower than people expect, because the density does the work.

The driver knows the tare exactly, because they cross a weighbridge empty and loaded, and the ticket shows both. Ask, in the same phone call where you ask what the material weighs. Both questions have real answers at the yard and neither has one on the internet.

The arithmetic is short and worth having in one place, because four different units turn up in the same phone call.

A cubic yard is 27 cubic feet. Three feet each way, and it is the unit bulk material is quoted in almost everywhere in the US.

Area times depth is the whole calculation. Square feet times the depth in inches, divided by 12, gives cubic feet. Divided by 27 again gives cubic yards. Or in one step: square feet times inches, divided by 324.

Tons need a density and cubic yards do not. That is the join that breaks, and it breaks in the same place on every page of this site. Aggregate is quoted by the ton at the yard and calculated by the cubic yard on paper, and the bridge between them is a property of a specific pile.

A scoop is not a unit. It is whatever that yard's loader bucket holds, it is frequently not a cubic yard, and it varies between yards. Ask what a scoop is in cubic yards before comparing two prices that both use the word.

Three questions, and all three have exact answers on the other end of the phone.

What does a cubic yard of this material weigh? They weigh loads across a weighbridge all day, so they know. This unlocks every tonnage row on this page and on the gravel calculator.

What is the truck, and what does it weigh empty? The configuration tells you the ceiling and the tare tells you the payload. A driver who has just crossed a scale empty and loaded can tell you both to the pound.

Are you selling by weight or by volume, and is delivery separate? A price per ton and a price per cubic yard are not comparable without the first question, and a delivery charged per load makes the load size a price question rather than a logistics one.

None of that is difficult and almost nobody asks it, which is why a fourteen yard truck turns up with ten and a third yards on it and everybody is surprised.

A dump body has a volume, it is stamped on the truck, and it is the number people reach for when they picture a load. For anything as heavy as aggregate it is almost never the limit.

Work it the direct way. Take the ceiling for the truck, divide by what the material weighs per cubic yard, and you get the cubic yards that fit before the axles run out. Compare that with the body volume. Whichever is smaller is your load, and for stone, sand and wet soil it is the weight, every time.

Which is why the same truck is a different load for different materials. Bark mulch is light enough to fill the body and go; the same body full of crushed rock would be over on the drive axles before it was half full. A yard that quotes you a load has already made that judgement, and it is why they ask what you want rather than how much.

And it is why the fourth axle exists. A liftable pusher or tag axle on a tri-axle raises the ceiling by 20,000 lb, which is 10 more tons of payload for the price of a hydraulic axle. Watch one drop as a loaded truck pulls out of a quarry. It is not suspension, it is arithmetic.

There is a fourth limit, and it is the one that catches people who have satisfied the first three:

No vehicle or combination of vehicles shall be moved or operated on any Interstate highway when the gross weight on two or more consecutive axles exceeds the limitations prescribed by the following formula, referred to as the Bridge Gross Weight Formula: except that two consecutive sets of tandem axles may carry a gross load of 34,000 pounds each if the overall distance between the first and last axle is 36 feet or more. In no case shall the total gross weight of a vehicle exceed 80,000 pounds.

The Bridge Gross Weight Formula limits the weight on any group of consecutive axles according to how far apart they are, because a short wheelbase concentrates load on a bridge span. Spread the same axles further and more weight is allowed.

This page does not evaluate it. The formula is published in the Code of Federal Regulations as an equation rather than as text, and the extraction used here returned the sentence around it and not the equation itself. A weight limit written from memory is exactly the kind of figure this site refuses to print, so it is named, its stated exception is quoted above, and the arithmetic is left to the people with the scales.

What the quoted exception does tell you is why articulated trucks are long: two sets of tandems can each carry the full 34,000 lb only if the first and last axle are 36 feet or more apart.

One more limit on scope:

The provisions of the section are applicable to the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways and reasonable access thereto.

This is the Interstate System and reasonable access to it. States set their own limits off it, some of them higher under grandfather provisions the section preserves, and a local road can carry a posted limit far below any of this. The federal figures are a ceiling to reason from, not a permit.

Read 2026-09-09. 23 CFR 658.17, Weight, Federal Highway Administration, Truck Size and Weight, Route Designations. Office of the Federal Register, eCFR. Sets 80,000 lb gross, 20,000 lb on any single axle and 34,000 lb on a tandem, all of them inclusive of enforcement tolerances. The Bridge Gross Weight Formula can lower any of these and is not evaluated here.

It does not tell you what your material weighs. That is a property of a specific pile at a specific moisture, no government publication found from here tabulates it, and the gravel calculator sets out at length why. Your supplier weighs loads daily and has the number.

And it does not tell you what your truck weighs empty. That is on the plate.

Supply those two and everything on this page becomes exact. Supply neither and it still gives you the ceiling, which is more than a page quoting a truckload price can do.