EstimatorKitFree crushed stone calculator
Crushed stone by grade and size, in tons
Choose the grade you are going to ask the yard for — #57, #67, #8, #411 dense-grade, screenings or ballast — and this returns the tons and cubic yards for your area and depth at that grade’s own weight per yard. The grade is not a label here: across the series it moves the weight of a cubic yard by fourteen percent, and it decides whether a compaction allowance applies at all, because only the grades with crusher dust in them have anything to lock together.
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- 6 ASTM grades
- Density per grade
- Clean vs dense-graded
3/4 in down to dust — Driveway base, paver and wall base, anything that has to be compacted to grade and stay there.
| Grade | Size | Fines | lb/yd³ |
|---|---|---|---|
| #57 | 3/4 in, washed clean | None — stays loose | 2,500 |
| #67 | 3/4 in down to #4 | None — stays loose | 2,550 |
| #8 | 3/8 in chips, clean | None — stays loose | 2,600 |
| #411 dense-grade | 3/4 in down to dust | Yes — locks | 2,800 |
| Screenings | 1/4 in down to dust (#10) | Yes — locks | 2,700 |
| #2 / #4 ballast | 1 to 2 1/2 in, clean | None — stays loose | 2,450 |
Ask for #411 dense-grade — 3/4 in down to dust
13.6 tons
- Cubic yards
- 9.72
- Bare volume
- 250 cu ft
- With 5% waste
- 263 cu ft
- Coverage at this depth
- 44.1 sq ft per ton
#411 dense-grade carries fines, so it densifies. Spread it 5 in deep to finish at 4 in, which is where the 20% in the volume above comes from.
Bagged or loaded loose
Past bagging: this would take 525 retail bags and 26,250 lb of lifting. Have the yard load it by weight into a trailer or send a truck — the counter prices it off the ticket either way.
Tonnage uses 2,800 lb per cubic yard. Switching from #57 to #411 dense-grade at the same depth changes the ticket by 12% on weight alone, which is why the grade goes on the order and not just the size.
How to order crushed stone by grade
Three steps, and the first one is the one that decides the other two.
Pick the grade the job wants, not the size you remember
Ask what the stone has to do. Drainage, a slab sub-base or a septic field wants a washed open-graded stone with no fines in it, which is a #57 or a #67. Anything that has to be compacted and stay compacted — a driveway base, a paver base, the leveling pad under a wall — wants a dense-graded product with the crusher dust left in. The panel under the selector says what each number is and what it is normally bought for.
Give the area and the depth the stone has to finish at
Length and width come off the tape in whatever form they were written down, and the depth is the finished thickness of that layer. The waste allowance starts at 5%, which covers the stone that ends up outside the forms and in the wheelbarrow ruts, and you can take it to zero to read the bare geometry.
Check the density before you read the tonnage
The density field reloads with each grade because that is the number the grade actually changes — a clean 3/4 in stone is roughly 40% air by volume, and the same rock crushed down to a dense grade fills those voids with its own dust. Overwrite it with the figure on your quarry's spec sheet if you have one, then read the tons, which is what the scale ticket will say.
Technical specifications
| Grades priced | #57, #67, #8, #411 dense-grade, screenings (#10) and #2/#4 ballast |
|---|---|
| Density range applied | 2,450 lb/yd³ for large clean ballast up to 2,800 lb/yd³ for dense-grade |
| Compaction allowance | Applied to dense-graded products only, at 20%; off for washed clean stone |
| Size series used | ASTM D448 / AASHTO M43 numbers, with the regional trade names listed |
| Waste default | 5%, adjustable, shown next to the bare volume rather than folded into it |
| Small-job option | Whole 0.5 ft³ retail bags, with the leftover volume stated |
| Answer given in | Short tons, cubic yards, cubic feet and square feet covered per ton |
| Data leaving the browser | None — the grade table and the arithmetic ship with the page |
Frequently asked questions
What is #57 stone?
A washed, single-size crushed stone of about 3/4 in, with essentially nothing in it smaller than a #4 sieve. The number comes from the ASTM D448 and AASHTO M43 size series, which is the reason it means the same thing in Ohio as it does in Georgia while the phrase "three-quarter stone" does not. Because there are no fines, water runs straight through it, which is why it goes under slabs, around foundation drains, in septic leach fields and as the top course on a drive that has to keep draining.
What is the difference between clean stone and dense-grade?
Clean stone is a narrow band of one size with the dust washed out; dense-grade is that same stone recombined with everything smaller, down to powder. The consequence is mechanical rather than cosmetic. Dense-grade has small particles to fill the gaps between the large ones, so it densifies under a plate and sets up almost like a soft pavement. Clean stone has nothing to fill its voids with, so it arrives at very nearly its packed density and stays loose forever — which is exactly what you want in a drain and exactly wrong under a paver.
What is #411, and why does it have five other names?
It is #57 stone mixed back with screenings, and the names are regional: 411 in Ohio, DGA in the mid-Atlantic, CA6 in Illinois, 21AA in Michigan, Item 4 in New York, crusher run almost anywhere. All of them describe a dense-graded aggregate running from about 3/4 in down to dust. If you ask for it by the wrong regional name the counter will usually work out what you meant, but asking for "dense-grade, three-quarter down to dust" is understood everywhere.
How much does a cubic yard of crushed stone weigh?
Between about 2,450 and 2,800 lb depending on the grade, and the grade is what moves it more than the rock does. The largest clean ballast is the lightest per yard because its voids are the biggest; a dense-graded base is the heaviest because its own dust has filled them. On a 30 by 20 ft pad at 4 in that spread is worth almost four tons: 13.6 tons of #411 against 9.7 tons of #57 for the same finished thickness.
Which crushed stone goes under a concrete slab?
Four inches of #57, uncompacted, is the standard detail for a residential slab on grade. The open voids give water somewhere to go and break the capillary path that would otherwise wick moisture up into the concrete, and unlike a dense-grade base it cannot be under-compacted because there is nothing in it to compact. Where a heavier slab needs a structural sub-base under that layer, the base goes in as dense-grade and the #57 sits on top of it.
Can #57 stone be compacted?
Not in the way a dense grade can — you consolidate it, which takes two or three passes and moves the surface rather than the volume. Running a plate over open-graded stone seats the pieces against each other and knocks the high spots down; it does not reduce the depth by any figure worth ordering extra material for. That is why this page turns the compaction allowance off for the clean grades and leaves it on for #411 and screenings, instead of applying one number to everything.
What size stone should go in a French drain or a septic field?
A washed #57 or a slightly larger clean stone, never anything with fines in it. The whole function is void space around the pipe, and screenings or crusher run introduced into a drain field will migrate into those voids and blind it within a few seasons. Wrap the stone in a non-woven filter fabric to keep the surrounding soil out, which is a different fabric from the woven stabilization geotextile used under a driveway base.
About stone size numbers and what they actually specify
The number on a bin at a quarry is a gradation, not a diameter. ASTM D448 and its highway-agency twin AASHTO M43 define each size number as a set of percentages passing a series of sieves, so a #57 is not “three-quarter-inch stone” so much as a band that runs from about an inch and a half down to a #4 screen with almost nothing below it. That definition is portable in a way a fraction never is. Ask two yards in two states for three-quarter stone and you can get two visibly different products; ask both for #57 and you get the same gradation, which is why the number belongs on the order and the fraction belongs in conversation.
What the gradation buys you is a void ratio, and void ratio is the hinge this whole page turns on. A single-size washed stone has nothing small enough to sit in the gaps between its pieces, so roughly two-fifths of a delivered load is air. That is a feature when the stone is there to move water — under a slab, around a foundation drain, in a leach field — and it is also why the material weighs less per cubic yard than the same rock crushed to a dense grade, where the crusher dust fills those same gaps. Dense-graded stone densifies under a plate compactor because it has somewhere for the small particles to go; clean stone does not, and applying a blanket compaction allowance to it inflates the order for no reason. Where the whole build-up is layered base under wearing course, the gravel calculator prices both courses in one pass.
Grade also decides what the stone is allowed to touch. Screenings make a beautiful setting bed under flagstone and a terrible drain. A #57 makes a perfect sub-slab layer and a driveway surface that spreads sideways under a turning wheel. A leveling pad below a segmental retaining wall wants dense-grade, while the drainage chimney directly behind the same wall wants clean stone, which is one wall needing two products from two bins. The sub-base under a concrete slab follows the same logic. And when the stone is chosen for how it looks rather than what it carries, the size ranges stop being sieve numbers and become coverage figures instead — that is the domain of the river rock calculator and of pea gravel, neither of which is ever asked to lock up.
What this page knows about your order
Every number on this page is worked out by JavaScript running in the tab you are reading it in. Nothing you type — measurements, quantities, the prices your supplier quoted you — is uploaded, logged or kept, which is also why the calculators carry on working on a site with no signal.
The grade you selected is not recorded either. There is no quarry on the other end of this page collecting which size numbers people search for in which region.