Bags, tons, barrows and truckloads
1 cubic yard is 27 cubic feet and about 1.5 tons. That single figure answers most of the conversions people search for before they order: roughly 36 bags, 9 to 14 wheelbarrow loads, more than a half-ton pickup can legally carry, and about a fifteenth of an 18-wheeler load.
What is the one number to remember?
The 1 figure to remember. One cubic yard is 27 cubic feet, and 1 cubic yard of dirt, sand or aggregate weighs roughly 1.5 tons, about 3,000 pounds. Everything else on this page is that number divided by something. A cubic yard will not fit in a half-ton pickup, and it is about 36 of the 0.75 cubic foot bags sold at a hardware store.
How many bags of soil make a cubic yard?
Bagged soil to bulk yards
Bagged soil is sold by weight and stacked by volume, so the conversion runs through the cubic-feet figure printed on the bag, not the pound figure. Most US topsoil bags state either 0.75 or 1.0 cubic feet. Divide 27 by that number. Check your own bag, because brands differ and the same weight of a lighter product takes up more space.
| Bag size | Bags per cubic yard | The arithmetic |
|---|---|---|
| 0.5 cubic foot bag | 54 bags | 27 divided by 0.5 |
| 0.75 cubic foot bag, the usual 40 lb topsoil | 36 bags | 27 divided by 0.75 |
| 1.0 cubic foot bag | 27 bags | 27 divided by 1.0 |
| 1.5 cubic foot bag, typical garden mix | 18 bags | 27 divided by 1.5 |
| 2.0 cubic foot bag, typical mulch | 14 bags | 27 divided by 2.0 |
36 bags to make 1 cubic yard is why nobody fills a yard from a hardware store once the job gets past a couple of beds. It is also the arithmetic behind our 20 cubic yard minimum: 20 yards is about 720 bags, and you would need a truck to bring the bags.
What can I move myself?
Moving one cubic yard by hand or by pickup
What 1 cubic yard looks like once it is on your driveway and you have to move it. These are honest working figures, not rated capacities. You cannot fill a rated container to the brim with wet clay and still lift or legally carry it.
| What you are using | Realistic capacity | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Contractor wheelbarrow rated 6 cubic feet | 9 to 14 trips | Rated capacity assumes a level fill with something light. With dirt you are realistically moving 2 to 3 cubic feet a trip before the barrow becomes unliftable on a slope. |
| Half-ton pickup, F-150, Silverado 1500, Ram 1500 | About half a cubic yard | The bed has the volume. It does not have the payload. 1 cubic yard of dirt is around 3,000 pounds and a half-ton payload rating is usually well under 2,000 pounds including passengers, so you are weight-limited long before you are space-limited. |
| Three-quarter or one-ton pickup | About 1 cubic yard | Roughly a yard of dry material within payload. Wet clay will still overload it. This is the practical ceiling for hauling your own dirt, and it is 20 trips to move what one small dump truck brings in 1. |
| Single-axle tipper or small dump trailer | 2 to 5 cubic yards | Check the trailer's rating in pounds and divide by 3,000 rather than trusting the cubic-yard figure on the sticker, which is usually quoted for mulch. |
Past 5 cubic yards you are into truck territory, and truck capacity for dirt is set by legal axle weight rather than by how much fits in the bed. Dump truck sizes and yardage.
Why is weight the number that binds, not volume?
Bulk material is quoted in cubic yards and hauled under weight limits, and those 2 systems disagree constantly. A truck bed that physically holds 18 cubic yards of mulch will be over its legal weight at 11 or 12 cubic yards of wet clay, because clay is roughly 3 times the weight of mulch for the same space.
In the trade this is the difference between a load that cubes out, meaning it runs out of space first, and one that weighs out, meaning it runs out of legal payload first. Dirt weighs out, almost always. That is why the yardage a truck can carry is smaller than its bed size suggests, and why nobody in this business quotes a truckload without knowing what is going in it.
It also explains a quoting pattern that confuses people. 2 suppliers can both say a truckload and mean quantities that differ by half, honestly, because they run different trucks. We sell by the cubic yard for exactly that reason.
What actually changes the weight of a cubic yard?
Moisture is the big one and it is not a small effect. The same clay that runs around 1.4 tons per cubic yard bone dry can run meaningfully heavier saturated, because the water filling the voids is itself heavy. This is why a load that arrives the day after heavy rain feels like more material than the same yardage delivered in a dry August, and why a wet delivery is harder to spread and impossible to compact properly.
Composition is the second factor. Sand is denser than loose organic topsoil. Clay with gravel running through it is denser again. Screened topsoil with a lot of organic matter in it is the lightest thing on this list. When we quote 1.5 tons per cubic yard we are quoting the general rule of thumb published on our own tools page, not a scale reading for your specific load.
Compaction is the third. A cubic yard measured loose on the truck is not a cubic yard once it has been placed in 6 to 8 inch lifts and rolled. The material has not changed weight, it now takes up less space, and that is exactly what you are paying a compactor to achieve. Order against loose volume and allow 10 to 25 percent for the shrink depending on how it is being placed.
How do I convert cubic yards to tons?
Multiply the cubic yards by the tons per cubic yard. At our published rule of thumb of 1.5 tons per yard, 20 cubic yards is about 30 tons, 40 cubic yards is about 60 tons, and 100 cubic yards is about 150 tons.
You need this conversion in 3 situations. When a plan, a permit or a disposal facility talks in tons while your excavation talks in yards. When you are checking whether a haul is legal before you book it. And when you are comparing a quote priced per ton against one priced per cubic yard, which is a genuinely common way to end up comparing 2 numbers that are not comparable.
You do not need it to order from us. We sell by the cubic yard and the yardage is the number we want on the phone, along with the delivery address.
What does 20 cubic yards actually look like?
It is the question behind our minimum order, and the honest answer surprises people in both directions. 20 cubic yards is about 30 tons. Spread 4 inches deep it covers about 1,620 square feet, which is a decent suburban back lawn. Spread at 1 foot deep it covers 540 square feet, which is a patio-sized area and not much more.
As a pile it is not enormous. 20 cubic yards heaped on a driveway is roughly the footprint of a small car and about 6 feet tall, depending on how the material stacks. As something to move by hand it is enormous: around 180 to 280 wheelbarrow loads, or 40 trips in a half-ton pickup.
That gap is the single most useful thing to internalise before you order. The pile looks manageable and the labour is not. If you do not have a skid steer, a tractor with a loader or a friend who does, tell us before the truck rolls so we can put the load as close as possible to where it actually needs to go.
Weight and conversion questions
How many 40 lb bags of topsoil equal a cubic yard?
About 36, if the bag holds 0.75 cubic feet, which is the most common size for a 40 pound topsoil bag in the US. The conversion runs through volume, not weight: divide 27 cubic feet by the cubic-feet figure printed on the bag. A 1.0 cubic foot bag takes 27 of them and a 0.5 cubic foot bag takes 54.
How much does a yard of dirt weigh?
Roughly 1.5 tons, or about 3,000 pounds, as a general guide for dirt, sand or aggregate. That is the figure we publish on our own tools page. Dry screened topsoil sits at the lighter end of the range and saturated clay well above it, so treat 1.5 tons as a planning number rather than a scale reading.
Will 1 yard of dirt fit in a pickup truck?
It fits by volume and overloads you by weight. A cubic yard of dirt is around 3,000 pounds and a half-ton pickup's payload rating is typically well under 2,000 pounds including passengers. Half a cubic yard is the honest limit for a half-ton. A three-quarter or one-ton truck will take about a yard of dry material.
How many wheelbarrow loads is a cubic yard?
9 to 14, depending on the barrow and on whether you can actually lift what you have loaded. A 6 cubic foot contractor barrow gives 4.5 loads on paper, but nobody fills one to the brim with dirt. 2 to 3 cubic feet per trip is realistic, which puts you at 9 to 14 trips per cubic yard.
How many cubic yards does a dump truck hold?
It depends on the truck class and, for dirt, on the legal weight limit rather than the bed size. A tandem-axle dump typically works out to 8 to 12 cubic yards of dirt and an 18-wheeler to 16 to 24. We broke the classes out onto a separate page because the answer is longer than a line.
How much area does 1 cubic yard cover?
324 square feet at 1 inch deep, 162 at 2 inches, 108 at 3 inches, 81 at 4 inches, 54 at 6 inches and 27 square feet at 12 inches deep. The full coverage table and a calculator that works it out for your dimensions are on our yardage calculator page.
How many tons is 20 cubic yards of dirt?
About 30 tons at the 1.5 tons per cubic yard rule of thumb. That is our minimum order, and it is the point below which the trucking cost swamps the material cost for both of us. 40 cubic yards is about 60 tons and 100 cubic yards is about 150 tons.
Work out your yardage first
The calculator turns length, width and depth into cubic yards, with an allowance for compaction. Then we need the delivery address to price it.