EstimatorKitTopsoil in yards, tons and loads
Topsoil is ordered for the depth you want once it has rained, and from that depth and an area this gives whole cubic yards to order, what they weigh on the supplier’s scale, and how many trips that is in whatever is hauling it. The default for a yard of screened topsoil is 2,000 lb — a working figure rather than a published one, since topsoil has no specification to publish against — and at anything near a ton a yard, weight, not volume, is what limits a delivery. The order is padded for settling and both figures stay on screen.
- Yards and tons
- Settling allowance shown
- Loads by payload
4 in is the usual minimum for a lawn expected to survive a dry August.
A yard is rarely one rectangle. Run the front, note the tonnage, then run the back — adding two areas is safer than averaging one odd shape.
Depth is what you want after the first heavy rain. The default 15% is a working allowance rather than a measured one, for the depth screened topsoil and compost lose as they settle after watering in, and it moves with organic content and how much it is worked.
Default is 2,000 lb — a working figure for loose screened topsoil, not a published standard. The wet row uses 2,200 lb, a working figure for the same soil after a wet week, also not a published standard. Both move with moisture above all, then how much sand, clay and organic matter the screening left in, so a load that sat through a wet week is a different order on the scale than the one you priced — and the supplier’s scale ticket beats either.
The buttons are starting points, not ratings. The figure that counts is on the sticker inside the driver’s door — on a trailer, the plate on the tongue, minus what the trailer itself weighs — and it covers everything aboard: passengers, tools and soil together.
Order this much topsoil
15 cu yds
- Exact figure
- 14.5 cu yd
- On the scale
- 14.5 tons
- Area covered
- 1,000 sq ft
- Wet, same volume
- 16 tons
Before any allowance the hole holds 12.3 cu yd. The order above is 14.5 because soil consolidates: spread it 4.71 in loose and it finishes at 4 in once water has driven the air out of it. Both numbers are printed so you can check a quote against the one you asked for.
Getting it home
20 loads at 1,500 lb, which is 0.75 cu yd a trip. At 2,000 lb a yard, volume is never what runs out first — a pickup bed that swallows two yards is over its rating at one.
This is also why a soil delivery gets quoted differently from a mulch one. The truck is filled to a weight, so a wet load means fewer yards on the same axle, and the yard would rather sell you the tonnage than argue about it afterwards.
Settling is not compaction, and the difference matters here more than anywhere else on the site. A base course under a driveway is compacted on purpose, in lifts, with a plate — gravel on the construction calculator is ordered deeper for that. Topsoil is never compacted on purpose: soil squeezed to that density has no pore space left, so water sits on it and roots stop at it. The allowance above covers the settling that happens anyway, under nothing heavier than rain.
Weight, settling and what fits in a truck
What does a cubic yard of topsoil weigh, wet and dry?
There is no published figure to quote, because topsoil is not a graded product with a specification behind it: what a yard weighs depends on how much water, sand, clay and organic matter is in that particular pile. This page starts from 2,000 lb a yard and uses 2,200 lb for a load that has sat through a wet week, and both are working figures for you to replace. The gap between them is the point — on a six yard order it is 1,200 lb of water, which is why a load can look and behave differently from the same order placed in August. Sand-heavy soils run heavier and peat-rich ones lighter. The number the yard uses is on their scale ticket, and it beats any figure printed on a website.
Will a pickup carry a cubic yard of topsoil?
Volume yes, weight usually no. A standard six and a half foot bed holds a little over two cubic yards level with the rails, but a single yard of screened topsoil is about a ton at this page's working figure, and the payload on the sticker inside the door covers everything in the vehicle, people included — the half-ton button on this page starts at 1,500 lb, but only the sticker counts. That is why the yards at a loading dock ask what you are driving before they ask how much you want, and why they will put half a bucket in a light truck and refuse the second.
How much does topsoil settle, and is that the same as compacting it?
It loses part of its loose depth to settling — this page allows 15%, a working allowance rather than a measured one — and no, that is a completely different process from compacting stone. Delivered soil is full of air pockets from being lifted and dropped by a bucket; water washes the fine particles down into those voids and gravity closes them, which takes a few weeks and no machinery. Compaction is deliberate mechanical densification of a graded aggregate, done in lifts with a plate so a driveway carries a wheel. Doing that to topsoil ruins it: soil pressed to that density has no pore space left, so it sheds water instead of taking it and roots stop dead at the boundary. The allowance on this page covers the settling that happens on its own.
How much topsoil can go over an existing lawn at once?
Half an inch a pass, and repeat a month later if the dip is deeper than that. Grass levels itself by growing up through thin soil, so a light dressing raked until the blades reappear disappears in two weeks of growth. Bury the canopy under two inches and you have not leveled a lawn, you have killed a strip of it and created a seed bed for whatever blows in. Deep hollows are fixed by lifting the sod, filling underneath and laying it back, not by burying the grass that is there.
What is the difference between screened topsoil, fill dirt and garden soil?
Screening, organic content and price, in that order. Screened topsoil has been run through a grid — commonly three-quarters or half an inch — to take out stones, roots and lumps, and it is what you want under sod or in a lawn. Fill dirt is subsoil sold to make up volume: cheap, heavy, often clay, no organic matter, and correct for backfilling a hole under a slab where you do not want anything to decompose and subside later. Bagged garden soil is topsoil already blended with compost and sold at many times the bulk price, which makes sense for a container and no sense for a lawn.
Soil is heavy, and it settles rather than compacts
Topsoil is the heaviest thing most homeowners ever buy loose, and almost nobody expects it. A cubic yard is a cube three feet on a side — about the volume of a chest freezer — and this page weighs it at 2,000 lb, a short ton — a working figure rather than a published one, since topsoil has no specification for a table to quote. That single fact reorganizes the whole order. It is why the yard asks what you are driving before it asks how many yards you want; why a delivered load gets quoted against a weight limit rather than a bed size; and why the pile that arrives always looks smaller than the number on the invoice. It is also the reason this page ends in a haul plan instead of a volume. Volume is what you are buying; weight is what decides whether it arrives in one trip, four, or on somebody else’s truck. Payload here is an input rather than a lookup because the only authority on what a vehicle can legally carry is the sticker inside its own door, and two trucks with the same badge on the tailgate can differ by half a ton.
The second fact is settling, and it is worth being precise about because it is routinely confused with compaction. Soil delivered by a bucket is full of air: it has been scooped, lifted, dropped into a truck and tipped onto a driveway, and every one of those steps leaves voids. Water is what closes them. Fine particles wash down into the gaps, gravity does the rest, and over a few weeks the surface drops — this page allows 15% of the loose depth for it, a working allowance rather than a measured one. Nothing mechanical is involved and nothing is meant to be. That is the opposite of what happens under a driveway, where a graded stone is deliberately densified in shallow lifts by a plate so it will carry a wheel without rutting, which is why gravel on the construction calculator is ordered deeper than it finishes. Compacting topsoil on purpose destroys it. Squeeze the pore space out of a soil and there is nowhere for water or air to go, so rain sheets off the surface and roots stop at the layer as if it were a wall. Order for the finished grade, let water do the settling, and keep the roller off it.
What you are buying also varies more than the word “topsoil” suggests, since it is not a graded product with a specification behind it. Screened means it has been through a grid that took out the stones and root balls, and that is the version that belongs under sod or in a lawn, with the grass seed calculator covering the seeded route on top of it. Unscreened fill is a different purchase for a different job. If the soil is going into a bed rather than onto grade it usually wants amending, which is measured as a proportion of the soil rather than a depth on top of it. And where the same area is simply being covered rather than built up, the purchase is mulch rather than soil. The general material estimator on the homepage runs compost and mulch as plain area times depth when you only want the volume.