Cubic Yards to Tons Calculator

Cubic yards measure volume, the space a pile of material takes up. Tons measure weight. Converting between them is the question every landscaping and driveway project runs into, because you order gravel or topsoil by the cubic yard but the quarry often sells and the truck is weighed in tons. The bridge between the two is density, how many pounds one cubic yard of the material weighs.

That density is the whole game, and it changes a lot by material. A cubic yard of dry gravel runs about 2,800 pounds, sand a little less, topsoil around 2,200, and concrete a hefty 4,050, while light wood mulch is only about 800. This tool carries typical dry densities for the common materials and lets you type your own when you have a real figure from the supplier. Once you have a weight in pounds, a United States short ton is simply 2,000 pounds, so the rest is division.

Moisture is the thing that wrecks estimates. Wet sand or rain-soaked topsoil can weigh 10 to 20 percent more than the dry numbers here, and compacted material packs more into the same yard than loose material does. So treat the result as a solid planning figure, not a billing-grade weight. If a job is large enough that being off by a fraction of a ton matters, get the actual loaded weight from the scale ticket.

The calculator works both directions. Enter cubic yards to get the weight in tons, pounds, and metric tonnes, or enter tons to find how many cubic yards that is. It also estimates how many dump-truck loads the job is and, if you enter a price per ton, what the material will cost. Pick a material or set a custom density, choose the direction, and enter your amount.