Cubic Yard Calculator
Length, width and a depth in inches turned into cubic yards, cubic feet and tons — plus how many pickup loads or delivery truckloads that actually is.
Cubic Yard Calculator: with the default inputs, cubic yards is 2.47 yd³.
Circle mode only — across the middle, not the radius.
Square-footage mode only.
In inches, because that is how depth gets specified — 2–3 in of decorative stone, 4 in of concrete or topsoil, 6 in of driveway base.
Identical beds, pads or trenches.
The pure geometry, before any waste percentage.
- Order this much
- 2.47 yd³Cubic yards plus your waste percentage — the figure to give the supplier.
- Cubic feet
- 66.6727 cubic feet make a cubic yard.
- Area covered
- 200 ft²
- Weight
- 3.58 tonAt the density under More options. Includes waste.
- Pickup loads
- 5Rounded up, and capped by whichever runs out first — the box or the payload rating.
- What limits a pickup load
- Payload — the box holds more than the truck should carry
- Cubic yards per safe pickup load
- 0.61
- Delivery truckloads
- 1Rounded up.
- One cubic yard covers, at this depth
- 81 ft²324 ÷ depth in inches.
Assumptions
- Volume is area × depth: a flat layer of even thickness, with no allowance for an uneven subgrade, a crown, or a slope.
- Cubic yards are geometry, not delivery units. Most yards sell in half- or quarter-yard increments, so round up to theirs.
- The weight per cubic yard is a single figure you supply; the defaults and the help text come from Caterpillar's Weight of Materials table, Missouri DOT's maintenance tables and the EPA's volume-to-weight factors. Real material varies with moisture and gradation, and wet sand weighs about 29% more than dry.
- Pickup capacity is the level-full box volume you enter, capped by payload ÷ weight per yard. Heaped loads carry more volume but do nothing about the weight limit.
- Payload comes from your vehicle's door-jamb placard and already includes passengers, fuel and anything else in the truck. The default is Ford's 1,775 lb figure for a 2.7-litre 2026 F-150 XL.
- The delivery truckload default, six cubic yards, is the City of Alexandria's figure for a mulch load. The commonly quoted 10–14 cubic yards for a tandem dump truck has no source we could verify; ask your supplier.
- All counts — loads and truckloads — round up.
| Area | Square feet | Cubic yards |
|---|---|---|
| 10 × 10 ft | 100 | 1.23 |
| 12 × 12 ft | 144 | 1.78 |
| 10 × 20 ft | 200 | 2.47 |
| 16 × 16 ft | 256 | 3.16 |
| 20 × 20 ft | 400 | 4.94 |
| 24 × 24 ft (two-car pad) | 576 | 7.11 |
| 20 × 50 ft (driveway) | 1,000 | 12.35 |
| 1/8 acre | 5,445 | 67.22 |
Square feet × depth in inches ÷ 12 ÷ 27. Find the row nearest your job for a sanity check.
| Cubic yards | Cubic feet | Cubic metres | Tons at your density | Pickup loads |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0.5 | 13.5 | 0.38 | 0.73 | 1 |
| 1 | 27 | 0.76 | 1.45 | 2 |
| 2 | 54 | 1.53 | 2.9 | 4 |
| 3 | 81 | 2.29 | 4.35 | 5 |
| 5 | 135 | 3.82 | 7.25 | 9 |
| 10 | 270 | 7.65 | 14.5 | 17 |
| 15 | 405 | 11.47 | 21.75 | 25 |
| 20 | 540 | 15.29 | 29 | 33 |
One cubic yard is 27 cubic feet, 0.7646 cubic metres, and at 1.45 tons per cubic yard weighs 1.45 tons. Pickup loads use 0.61 yd³ a trip.
How this is worked out
The formula
Cubic feet = area in ft² × (depth in inches ÷ 12) Cubic yards = cubic feet ÷ 27 Order = cubic yards × (1 + waste) Weight in tons = cubic yards × density in tons per cubic yard Coverage of one cubic yard = 324 ÷ depth in inches (square feet) Safe pickup load = the smaller of the box volume and (payload ÷ density) Loads = order ÷ safe load, rounded up
Open How it’s calculated above to see this worked through with your own numbers.
What you enter
- Shape of the area
- Choose one of 3 options.Rectangle or square — length × width · Circle — diameter · I already know the square footage
- Length
- A number.in ft, in, yd, m, cm · 0 or more · defaults to 20
- Width
- A number.in ft, in, yd, m, cm · 0 or more · defaults to 10
- Diameter
- Circle mode only — across the middle, not the radius.in ft, in, yd, m, cm · 0 or more · defaults to 12
- Area
- Square-footage mode only.in ft², yd², m², acre · 0 or more · defaults to 200
- Depth
- In inches, because that is how depth gets specified — 2–3 in of decorative stone, 4 in of concrete or topsoil, 6 in of driveway base.in in, ft, cm, mm, m · 0 or more · defaults to 4
- How many areas this size
- Identical beds, pads or trenches.from 1 to 10000 · whole numbers only · defaults to 1
- Extra for waste, compaction and settling(under More options)
- 0 gives the pure geometry. Crushed stone wants about 20% — MoDOT's loose and compacted weights for granite or limestone work out to a 21% loss of volume under a compactor. Concrete usually gets 5–10%; mulch and soil none.a percentage · from 0 to 100 · defaults to 0
- Weight of the material(under More options)
- Loose weights: 1.45 for dry sand and gravel and 1.70 wet, 1.20 for dry sand and 1.55 wet, 0.80 for topsoil (all Caterpillar); 1.21–1.30 for crushed granite or limestone (MoDOT); 0.24 for green wood chips (EPA). Ask your supplier for theirs — it is what they bill by.from 0.01 to 10 · defaults to 1.45
- Pickup bed capacity(under More options)
- Level with the top of the box, not heaped. The City of Cheyenne's compost sheet puts one level long-bed full-size pickup at 2.5 yd³. For a shorter box, measure it: length × width × depth in feet ÷ 27.from 0.01 to 50 · defaults to 2.5
- Pickup payload limit(under More options)
- From the placard in your door jamb, which already counts passengers and fuel. Ford rates the 2026 F-150 XL from 1,775 lb (2.7L EcoBoost) to 2,440 lb (3.5L EcoBoost); Chevrolet quotes 2,260 lb max available on the Silverado 1500. This is what limits an aggregate load, long before the box is full.in lb, kg · 1 or more · defaults to 1775
- Delivery truckload(under More options)
- The City of Alexandria, Virginia puts one dump-truck load of mulch at about six cubic yards. Tandem-axle dump bodies are specified at 15–16 yd³, but a load of anything heavy hits its legal weight long before the box is full — so ask your own supplier and put their figure here.from 0.01 to 200 · defaults to 6
What you get back
- Cubic yardsmain answer
- The pure geometry, before any waste percentage.
- Order this much
- Cubic yards plus your waste percentage — the figure to give the supplier.
- Cubic feet
- 27 cubic feet make a cubic yard.
- Area covered
- Weight
- At the density under More options. Includes waste.
- Pickup loads
- Rounded up, and capped by whichever runs out first — the box or the payload rating.
- What limits a pickup load
- Cubic yards per safe pickup load
- Delivery truckloads
- Rounded up.
- One cubic yard covers, at this depth
- 324 ÷ depth in inches.
What this assumes
- Volume is area × depth: a flat layer of even thickness, with no allowance for an uneven subgrade, a crown, or a slope.
- Cubic yards are geometry, not delivery units. Most yards sell in half- or quarter-yard increments, so round up to theirs.
- The weight per cubic yard is a single figure you supply; the defaults and the help text come from Caterpillar's Weight of Materials table, Missouri DOT's maintenance tables and the EPA's volume-to-weight factors. Real material varies with moisture and gradation, and wet sand weighs about 29% more than dry.
- Pickup capacity is the level-full box volume you enter, capped by payload ÷ weight per yard. Heaped loads carry more volume but do nothing about the weight limit.
- Payload comes from your vehicle's door-jamb placard and already includes passengers, fuel and anything else in the truck. The default is Ford's 1,775 lb figure for a 2.7-litre 2026 F-150 XL.
- The delivery truckload default, six cubic yards, is the City of Alexandria's figure for a mulch load. The commonly quoted 10–14 cubic yards for a tandem dump truck has no source we could verify; ask your supplier.
- All counts — loads and truckloads — round up.
About this calculator
A cubic yard is 27 cubic feet — a cube three feet on a side, which is roughly a washing machine and a half. Almost everything loose you buy for a house comes by the yard: concrete, topsoil, gravel, mulch, sand, fill. The awkward part is that the depth is always quoted in inches while the area is in feet, so the units have to be reconciled before anything divides by 27. That is the entire job of this page.
Depth is the number that decides the order
Get the area right and you are half done; get the depth wrong and the order is wrong by the same ratio. The rule worth memorising is that one cubic yard covers 324 square feet one inch deep — so divide 324 by your depth in inches and you have the coverage of a yard. At 3 in that is 108 ft², at 4 in it is 81 ft², at 6 in it is 54 ft².
Typical depths: 2–3 in for decorative stone or mulch, 4 in for a patio slab or topsoil, 5–6 in for a driveway slab, 10–12 in for a raised bed.
Ordering by the yard versus by the ton
Suppliers who load with a bucket sell by the cubic yard. Suppliers with a scale sell by the ton. To move between them you need the material's weight per yard, which is under More options. Caterpillar's engineering handbook gives loose weights of 2,900 lb per cubic yard for dry sand and gravel (1.45 tons) and 3,400 wet (1.70); 2,400 for dry sand and 3,100 wet; and 1,600 for topsoil. Missouri DOT puts loose crushed granite or limestone at 2,410–2,590 lb a yard. The EPA puts green wood chips at 473.
Notice how far wet moves it — the same yard of sand goes from 2,400 lb to 3,100, a 29% jump, purely from water. That is why the scale ticket and the estimate rarely agree, and why yards and tons are not interchangeable. For material-specific figures with the dry-to-soaked range, use the topsoil calculator or the gravel calculator; this page is the generic volume tool.
Why the trip count is not volume ÷ box size
The City of Cheyenne's compost sheet puts one level, long-bed, full-size pickup load at 2.5 cubic yards. That is what the box holds. What the truck may carry is a different number: Ford rates the 2026 F-150 XL at 1,775 lb of payload with the 2.7-litre engine and 2,440 lb with the 3.5, and Chevrolet quotes 2,260 lb max available on a Silverado 1500. At 2,400 lb a yard for dry sand, a 2,440 lb payload is gone at one cubic yard — barely a third of a level bed. So the real limit is payload ÷ weight per yard, and the calculator uses whichever cap bites first and tells you which one it was. Put your own door-jamb figure in and it will tell you the truth about your truck.
Delivery is the same story a size up. The City of Alexandria, Virginia quotes one dump-truck load of mulch as about six cubic yards; tandem-axle dump bodies are specified at 15–16 yards, but a load of stone reaches its legal weight long before the body is full. The widely repeated "10 to 14 yards" has no DOT, municipal or manufacturer source behind it that we could find, so ask your yard what one load holds and put their figure in.
Related tools
Already know the material? The gravel calculator, topsoil calculator, mulch calculator and concrete calculator add sourced weights, bag counts and pricing. For a cylinder, sphere or cone rather than a slab, use the volume calculator.
Frequently asked questions
▸How do I calculate cubic yards?
Multiply length by width in feet to get square feet, multiply by the depth in inches divided by 12, then divide by 27. A 20 × 10 ft area 4 in deep is 200 × 0.333 = 66.7 cubic feet, or 2.47 cubic yards.
▸How many cubic feet are in a cubic yard?
- A yard is three feet, and 3 × 3 × 3 = 27. In metric a cubic yard is 0.7646 cubic metres.
▸How much does a cubic yard cover?
324 square feet one inch deep, so divide 324 by your depth in inches: 108 ft² at 3 in, 81 ft² at 4 in, 54 ft² at 6 in, 27 ft² at 12 in.
▸How many cubic yards fit in a pickup truck?
The City of Cheyenne puts a level long-bed full-size pickup at 2.5 cubic yards. Carrying that much is another matter: Ford rates the 2026 F-150 XL between 1,775 and 2,440 lb of payload, and 2.5 yards of dry sand is 6,000 lb. A safe load of sand or gravel is about one cubic yard; mulch is light enough to fill the box.
▸How many tons is a cubic yard?
It depends entirely on the material and how wet it is. Caterpillar's loose weights are 1.45 tons for dry sand and gravel and 1.70 wet, 1.20 for dry sand and 1.55 wet, and 0.80 for topsoil. Missouri DOT puts loose crushed granite or limestone at 1.21–1.30 tons. The EPA puts green wood chips at 0.24.
Put this calculator on your own site
A working cubic yards, free for any site, with no ads and no sign-up. It resizes to fit wherever you paste it and updates itself as this page improves.
Paste this anywhere. It works on any site, carries no ads, never expires, and always shows the current version.
Cubic Yard Calculator by CalculateItNow
The page's own title. The clearest description of what the link leads to.
The credit line sits outside the widget on purpose, so it is a real link on your page rather than one buried in a frame. Please keep it — it is what pays for CalculateItNow staying free and ad-free. The script only resizes the widget to fit its contents; drop it and the widget still works.
Browse every calculator widget·How to add it to WordPress, Squarespace or Wix
Related calculators
The questions people ask next to a cubic yards.
Cubic yards and tons of gravel, crushed stone, sand or topsoil for an area at a given depth, with material densities, 0.5 cu ft bag counts and cost per ton.
Cubic yards and tons of topsoil, fill dirt, loam or sand for a bed, lawn or raised bed — with sourced dry-to-soaked weights and a settling allowance.
Cubic yards of concrete for slabs, footings, round columns and stairs, plus 60-lb and 80-lb bag counts (Quikrete yields), weight and cost — with the math shown.
Cubic yards of mulch for a bed at a given depth, how many 2 or 3 cu ft bags that is, and what bulk versus bagged will cost — with a coverage-by-depth table.
Volume and surface area of a box, cube, cylinder, sphere, cone or pyramid in any unit — cubic meters, liters, gallons, cubic feet — with the formula shown.
Square feet of a rectangle, circle, triangle or L-shaped room from your measurements, converted to square yards, meters and acres, with cost per square foot.