How many tonnes of gravel is a cubic yard?

Between about 1.1 and 1.5 tonnes, and no narrower than that honestly. Skoreyko Crushing Ltd. states that a cubic yard of gravel or crushed rock weighs about 1.45 metric tonnes and uses that as its own conversion factor. Gravel Calculator Canada publishes 1.1 to 1.5 tonnes per cubic yard and points at gravel type and moisture as the reason for the spread. Wet stone is heavier than the same stone dry, and a compacted load is denser than a loose one, so the yard is the reliable unit and the tonne is the negotiated one. Ask your supplier which figure their yard uses before you order by weight.

How deep should the gravel base under a driveway be?

The City of Toronto's own published pavement structure for the Broadview Avenue Extension puts 150 mm of Granular A under 40 mm of HL-1 and 50 mm of HL-8 asphalt. That is a public road built for traffic, so it is a defensible benchmark for a commercial lot and generous for a house driveway. For gravel that is the finished driving surface rather than a base, Foster Rock Quarry states a minimum of four inches, with another half inch where the stone is on the larger side.

What does gravel cost per tonne in Ontario?

The City of Toronto pays $34.00 per tonne for Granular A and the same $34.00 for 50 mm crushed aggregate in its own road-construction estimate, material only. That is a municipality buying almost two thousand tonnes at once, so it is a floor rather than a quote. Gravel Calculator Canada puts bulk gravel across Canada at roughly $15 to $60 per tonne before delivery. On a small load, delivery is frequently the bigger number of the two.

Should I order extra to allow for compaction?

Yes. Skoreyko Crushing states that a 10 to 20 percent allowance over the calculated volume is a common rule of thumb for compaction and settling, and that unprocessed pit run settles more than crushed material does. This calculator reports the finished in-place volume you asked for and does not silently pad it, so the allowance is yours to add deliberately rather than something buried in the number.

Does this work in metric or imperial?

Both, and it reports both at once. Enter the area in feet with a depth in inches, or in metres with a depth in millimetres, and the result comes back in cubic yards, cubic metres and cubic feet together. Ontario aggregate is sold by the tonne and by the cubic yard depending on who you are buying from, which is precisely why a calculator that reports only one of them is annoying to use here.

Gravel calculator

How many cubic yards of stone a surface swallows, what that weighs, and how much extra to order so the load is not short. The volume is exact arithmetic. The weight is published as a band, because loose aggregate does not have one density.

Last updated: August 25, 2026By The Pavement Desk

150 mm

Granular A depth in Toronto's own road pavement structure

1.1–1.5

tonnes per cubic yard, the published Canadian density band

Size of the area

Length (ft)Width (ft)

Compacted depth of the gravel

150 mm baseThe Granular A depth in Toronto's own road pavement structure4 in surfaceFoster Rock Quarry's stated minimum for a gravel driving surfaceSomething elseType the finished compacted depth yourself

Price the load against

What the City of Toronto pays$34 per tonne for Granular A, material only, buying almost 2,000 tonnes at onceWhat bulk gravel retails at in Canada$15–$60 per tonne before delivery, across gravel types and regions

Material to order

32.8 cubic yards

the same volume as 25.1 cubic metres or 886 cubic feet, laid 5.9 in (150 mm) deep over 1,800 sq ft

Weight of that volume: 36.1–49.2 t
Order with a 10–20% settling allowance: 36.1–39.4 yd³
Material at the selected rate: $1,227–$1,673

Density band 1.1–1.5 tonnes per cubic yard, from Gravel Calculator Canada, with Skoreyko Crushing Ltd. inside the band

Settling allowance from Skoreyko Crushing Ltd. (Canadian aggregate crushing and supply)

Material rate from City of Toronto (Broadview Avenue Extension, Municipal Class Environmental Assessment, preliminary cost estimate)

Delivery is not in any of these figures and is often the larger half on a small load.

Why the weight is a band and the volume is not

Two halves of this calculation have completely different standing, and it is worth knowing which is which before you order anything. The volume is arithmetic. Length times width times depth is a cubic measurement, and every conversion used here is exact by definition rather than by measurement: the international foot is 0.3048 metres, so a cubic foot is 0.028316846592 cubic metres and a cubic yard is exactly 27 cubic feet. Nothing in that half of the answer can be wrong unless the tape measure was.

The weight is a different animal. Loose aggregate has no single density. The same stone weighs more wet than dry, more compacted than loose, and more as a dense crushed product than as a rounded river gravel. Skoreyko Crushing states that a cubic yard of gravel or crushed rock weighs about 1.45 metric tonnes and uses that as its own conversion factor. Gravel Calculator Canada publishes a wider 1.1 to 1.5 tonnes per cubic yard. Rather than pick one and print a tonnage to one decimal place, this page publishes the wider band and names both, so the number you carry to a supplier is honest about how much it can move.

That matters commercially because Ontario aggregate is sold both ways. A quarry selling by the tonne and a landscape yard selling by the cubic yard are quoting different units for the same pile, and the conversion between them is the number being argued about. Ask which density a per-tonne quote assumes before comparing it to a per-yard one.

The 150 mm default is not invented either. It is the Granular A thickness in the City of Toronto’s own published pavement structure for the Broadview Avenue Extension, under 40 mm of HL-1 and 50 mm of HL-8 asphalt. That is a public road built for traffic, which makes it a defensible target for a commercial lot and a generous one for a house driveway. Where gravel is the finished driving surface rather than a base, Foster Rock Quarry states four inches as a minimum, with another half inch where the stone runs large.

One thing the calculator will not do is quietly pad the number. It reports the finished in-place volume you asked for and shows the settling allowance as its own separate line, so you add it on purpose rather than discovering later that the tool added 15% you did not know about.

What a granular base actually costs installed, as opposed to what the stone costs, sits in the Toronto excavation and grading cost guide.

Sources for every constant on this page

Canadian dollars and Canadian sources, August 2026. The two conversion factors are definitional and cite no source because none is needed; every density, depth and rate names the document it came from.

Frequently asked questions

How many tonnes of gravel is a cubic yard?: Between about 1.1 and 1.5 tonnes, and no narrower than that honestly. Skoreyko Crushing Ltd. states that a cubic yard of gravel or crushed rock weighs about 1.45 metric tonnes and uses that as its own conversion factor. Gravel Calculator Canada publishes 1.1 to 1.5 tonnes per cubic yard and points at gravel type and moisture as the reason for the spread. Wet stone is heavier than the same stone dry, and a compacted load is denser than a loose one, so the yard is the reliable unit and the tonne is the negotiated one. Ask your supplier which figure their yard uses before you order by weight.
How deep should the gravel base under a driveway be?: The City of Toronto's own published pavement structure for the Broadview Avenue Extension puts 150 mm of Granular A under 40 mm of HL-1 and 50 mm of HL-8 asphalt. That is a public road built for traffic, so it is a defensible benchmark for a commercial lot and generous for a house driveway. For gravel that is the finished driving surface rather than a base, Foster Rock Quarry states a minimum of four inches, with another half inch where the stone is on the larger side.
What does gravel cost per tonne in Ontario?: The City of Toronto pays $34.00 per tonne for Granular A and the same $34.00 for 50 mm crushed aggregate in its own road-construction estimate, material only. That is a municipality buying almost two thousand tonnes at once, so it is a floor rather than a quote. Gravel Calculator Canada puts bulk gravel across Canada at roughly $15 to $60 per tonne before delivery. On a small load, delivery is frequently the bigger number of the two.
Should I order extra to allow for compaction?: Yes. Skoreyko Crushing states that a 10 to 20 percent allowance over the calculated volume is a common rule of thumb for compaction and settling, and that unprocessed pit run settles more than crushed material does. This calculator reports the finished in-place volume you asked for and does not silently pad it, so the allowance is yours to add deliberately rather than something buried in the number.
Does this work in metric or imperial?: Both, and it reports both at once. Enter the area in feet with a depth in inches, or in metres with a depth in millimetres, and the result comes back in cubic yards, cubic metres and cubic feet together. Ontario aggregate is sold by the tonne and by the cubic yard depending on who you are buying from, which is precisely why a calculator that reports only one of them is annoying to use here.

If the gravel is going under asphalt

A granular base is almost never the end of the job. If this surface is being built up to take asphalt, the depth of the base and the number of asphalt lifts on top of it are the two specifications worth arguing about in a bid, and the tonnage of asphalt is its own calculation.

Asphalt tonnage calculator Excavation and grading contractors in the GTA