How many yards fit in a dump truck?
How many yards fit in a dump truck is the wrong question. For dirt, a truck runs out of legal weight before it runs out of space. At 1.5 tons per cubic yard, a truck rated to haul 15 tons carries about 10 cubic yards of dirt, whatever its bed holds in mulch.
What is the short answer?
The rule. For dirt, a truck weighs out before it cubes out. At roughly 1.5 tons per cubic yard, a truck rated to 15 tons of payload carries about 10 cubic yards of dirt, whatever its bed would hold in mulch. That is why we size the truck to the job and the site rather than quoting a flat truckload.
Dump truck classes and dirt yardage
Common dump truck classes and what they work out to for dirt. The yardage column is a working range, not a specification: legal payload varies by state, by axle configuration, by the truck's own tare weight and by how wet the material is on the day. Ask us what is coming to your address rather than planning against a number off a web page.
| Truck class | What it is for | Working yardage of dirt | The constraint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single-axle dump | Small residential drops, tight access | 5 to 8 cubic yards | Fits where nothing else will. Most trips per yard delivered, so the highest cost per yard. |
| Tandem-axle dump | The residential workhorse | 8 to 12 cubic yards | The truck most driveways see. Needs room to raise a bed and firm ground under the rear axles. |
| Tri-axle dump | Larger residential and light commercial | 10 to 16 cubic yards | More payload per trip. Wants a firm, open approach and a real turnaround. |
| End dump on an 18-wheeler | Bulk volume onto open sites | 16 to 24 cubic yards | Tips very tall. Overhead clearance is almost always the binding constraint. |
| Belly dump on an 18-wheeler | Spreading in a windrow along a run | 16 to 24 cubic yards | Drops through the belly while rolling. Needs a straight run and no obstacles. |
What does cubes out versus weighs out mean?
Every haul is limited by 1 of 2 things: the space in the bed, or the weight the truck is legally allowed to put on the road. A load that fills the bed first has cubed out. A load that hits the weight limit first has weighed out.
Light material cubes out. You can fill an 18 cubic yard bed with mulch and be nowhere near a weight problem. Dirt does the opposite. At 1.5 tons a yard, 16 cubic yards is 24 tons of payload, which is more than most legal configurations will carry. So the truck goes out part full, and the yardage it delivers is set by the scale rather than the tape measure.
This is the most useful thing to understand about buying dirt by the truckload, and it explains a lot of quotes that otherwise look inconsistent. 2 suppliers quoting a truckload can be quoting quantities that differ by half, both honestly.
Why do you sell by the cubic yard instead of the truckload?
We sell by the cubic yard with a 20 cubic yard minimum, and we do that deliberately. A truckload is not a unit of measurement. It depends on the truck, the material, the moisture, the state you are in and that specific carrier's tare weight.
Quoting yards means you know what you are getting and you can check it against the volume you calculated. Quoting truckloads means trusting that the supplier's truckload and your mental picture of a truckload are the same thing. In a trade with this one's track record, that is not a small difference, and it is exactly the gap that lets a dishonest operator deliver 8 yards and bill for 14.
It also means you can compare our number against anyone else's. A price per cubic yard is comparable. A price per load is not, unless you know the load.
Which truck should come to my site?
Bigger is cheaper per yard and harder to get in. That is the whole trade-off. An 18-wheeler moving 20 cubic yards in 1 trip beats 2 tandem loads on cost, provided it can physically reach the tipping spot, turn around, and raise a bed without touching anything.
The things that rule a big truck out are almost always the same 4: a gate or driveway too narrow, overhead power lines or tree limbs over the tipping spot, ground too soft to carry the weight, and nowhere to turn around. A raised dump bed is tall, far taller than the truck itself, and a driver who cannot raise it safely will not tip the load.
Tell us about the approach when you order, not when the driver is on your street. Sizing the truck to the site up front is free. A truck that turns around at your gate is not, and on most sites the cancellation terms will apply to it.
How many loads will my job take?
Take your total cubic yards and divide by the working yardage of the truck class that can physically reach your site. A 60 cubic yard pool fill reached only by a tandem is 5 to 7 trips. The same 60 yards onto an open lot an 18-wheeler can enter is 3 loads, or 2 if the site takes the biggest configuration.
That difference is real money, because trucking is roughly 90 percent of what a load of dirt costs. If there is any way to open up access, taking a gate off, tipping in a different spot, borrowing the neighbour's driveway for the turnaround, it is usually worth more than any negotiation on the material price.
Large orders arrive across several loads and sometimes across several days. Deliveries run between 8am and 5pm on a continual daily basis until the amount you ordered is met, so a 200 yard order is not a single event you need to be on site for. Work out your yardage first, then let us tell you what can reach you and how it will arrive.
Dump truck questions
How many cubic yards is a dump truck of dirt?
For dirt, a tandem-axle dump truck typically works out to 8 to 12 cubic yards and an 18-wheeler to 16 to 24, because the legal weight limit binds before the bed is full. The same trucks carry considerably more mulch or wood chips, which weigh a fraction of what dirt does per cubic yard.
How many tons can a dump truck haul?
It depends on the axle configuration, the state's legal limits and the truck's own tare weight, which is why we size the truck to the job rather than publishing 1 figure. The useful conversion runs the other way: divide the legal payload in tons by about 1.5 to get the cubic yards of dirt it can carry.
Do you deliver by 18-wheeler or dump truck?
Both. Which one comes is a function of how many cubic yards you need and what your site will physically take. Describe your access when you order, meaning gate width, overhead lines, how firm the ground is and where you want it tipped, and we will match the equipment to the site.
Can the driver spread the load?
No. A driver tips a load where you direct them. A driver does not spread it. For clay fill in particular you want a skid steer, a tractor with a loader or a small dozer on site. If you have no machine, say so when you order, because it changes where the load should land.
What stops a big truck making the delivery?
4 things, in order of how often they happen: overhead power lines or tree limbs over the tipping spot, a gate or driveway too narrow, ground too soft to carry the weight, and nowhere to turn around. All 4 are cheap to solve the day before and expensive to discover on the day.
How many dump truck loads is 100 cubic yards?
Between 4 and 6 loads on an 18-wheeler at 16 to 24 cubic yards a load, or 9 to 13 loads on a tandem-axle dump at 8 to 12 cubic yards. That spread is why site access moves the price so much: the same 100 yards can be twice the trucking depending on what can physically reach you.
Tell us about the access
Gate width, overhead lines, how firm the ground is and where you want it tipped. We size the truck to the site rather than finding out the hard way.