Dirt Calculator

Use this dirt calculator to find how many cubic yards, tons and truckloads of dirt a job involves. It works in both directions. If you’re filling in, it tells you how much fill dirt or topsoil to order. If you’re digging out, it tells you how big the pile will be once the soil is loose, what it weighs, and how many truckloads it takes to haul away. Most calculators only handle the first job.

About the dirt calculator

Dirt changes size when you move it. A cubic yard in the ground becomes more than a cubic yard in a truck, and less than a cubic yard once it’s packed into a fill. Ignore that and you order too little, or you book too few trucks.

• Filling in. Measure the space, add an allowance for settling, and get the cubic yards to order, with weight, truckloads, bags and cost.
• Digging out. Measure the hole and get the loose volume to haul, which is larger than the hole. The swell figures come from Caterpillar and the Federal Highway Administration.
• Truckloads by volume and by weight. Wet or sandy soil can hit a truck’s weight limit before the bed is full. The calculator checks both and uses whichever needs more trips.
• Honest ranges. Published soil weights and swell figures differ, so you see the low and the high. Enter your own figures and you get one number.
• Several areas, five shapes. Up to 20 rows: rectangle, circle, triangle, ring, or an area you already know.

It runs in your browser. Nothing you enter is sent anywhere or saved.

How to use the dirt calculator

1. Choose the job. “Filling in” if you’re ordering dirt. “Digging out” if you’re removing it.
2. Choose your units. Feet with depth in inches, or metres with depth in centimetres.
3. Enter each area. Pick the shape, type the measurements and the depth. Add a row for each separate area or hole.
4. Pick the soil type. Fill dirt, topsoil, clay or sand. Choose “Other” to enter your own weight and swell.
5. Set the extras. The settling allowance (filling only), the truck size, and optionally the truck’s weight limit and a price per cubic yard.
6. Read the result. The headline is the cubic yards to order or to haul.

The dirt calculator formula

Every estimate starts with volume:

Cubic yards = length (ft) x width (ft) x depth (ft) / 27

With depth in inches, the shortcut is square feet x inches / 324. After that, the two jobs go different ways.

Notice the weight line. Loosening soil adds air, not weight. So for a dig, the weight comes from the hole, not from the pile.

Bank, loose and compacted: the three states of dirt

Earthmoving uses three names for the same soil.

• Bank is soil as it lies in the ground, undisturbed.
• Loose is soil that has been dug. It has swelled because of the gaps between the lumps.
• Compacted is soil that has been placed and packed down. It’s denser than loose soil and often denser than bank soil.

The Federal Highway Administration puts numbers on it: 1 cubic yard of earth in the ground may take 1.25 cubic yards of space in the truck, then end up as only 0.65 to 0.85 cubic yards once compacted in a fill.

Dirt calculator example: filling in

You want to raise a 20 ft by 10 ft area by 6 inches with fill dirt.

1. In place: 20 x 10 x 6 / 324 = 3.70 cubic yards.
2. With 15% for settling: 3.70 x 1.15 = 4.26 cubic yards to order.
3. Weight: loose fill dirt runs 2,070 to 2,700 lb per cubic yard, so 4.41 to 5.75 tons.
4. Truckloads: one, in a 10 cubic yard truck.

Here’s the same order in each soil type.

Example: digging out for a pool

A hole 30 ft by 15 ft and 5 ft deep is 2,250 cubic feet, or 83.33 cubic yards in the ground. The soil is ordinary loam. You have 10 cubic yard trucks with a 13 ton limit.

1. Swell for this soil runs from 24% to 50%, so the loose pile is 103.33 to 125 cubic yards.
2. Weight: 83.33 x 2,600 to 3,400 lb = 108.33 to 141.67 tons.
3. Truckloads by volume: up to 125 / 10 = 12.5, so 13. By weight: up to 141.67 / 13 = 10.9, so 11. Volume is the limit: 11 to 13 loads.

If you’d booked trucks for the size of the hole alone, you’d have planned 9 loads and come up short.

Look at the sand row. The pile is at most 94 cubic yards, which is 10 loads by volume. But it can weigh 145.83 tons, and that’s 12 loads at 13 tons each. With sand, weight is the limit, and the dirt calculator tells you so.

Example: a utility trench

A trench 100 ft long, 2 ft wide and 3 ft deep is 600 cubic feet, or 22.22 cubic yards. In loam that’s 27.56 to 33.33 loose cubic yards: 3 to 4 truckloads. If disposal costs $15 a cubic yard, budget $413 to $500.

Example: raised garden beds

Three beds of 4 ft by 8 ft, filled 12 inches deep with topsoil, hold 96 cubic feet: 3.56 cubic yards. With 10% extra you need 3.91 cubic yards. That’s 71 bags of 1.5 cubic feet, which is why bulk delivery usually wins once you pass a yard or two.

For a new lawn, 1,000 square feet of topsoil at 4 inches is 12.35 cubic yards, or 13.58 with 10% extra. That’s two truckloads.

Reading your result

• Cubic yards to order (filling). The figure for your supplier. It includes the settling allowance.
• Loose cubic yards to haul (digging). A range, because swell varies. This is the figure for your hauler.
• In place, or in the ground. The measured volume before any allowance or swell. It’s exact, because it’s geometry.
• Weight. US tons and metric tonnes. For a dig, the dirt calculator bases it on the hole, since loosening doesn’t add weight.
• Truckloads. Rounded up to whole loads, with a note on whether space or weight sets the number.
• Area by area. One line per row, so a typing mistake stands out.

Open “Show the working” to see every step. If you and your contractor get different numbers, the working shows which assumption differs.

How much dirt weighs

These are the figures the dirt calculator uses, in pounds per cubic yard. “CAT” is Caterpillar’s material density table. “FHWA” is the Federal Highway Administration’s earthwork design guidance. Both were read on October 3, 2026.

Water is the biggest variable. Caterpillar lists dry sand at 2,400 lb per loose cubic yard and wet sand at 3,100. After rain, plan toward the top of the range.

How much dirt swells when you dig it

The two sources disagree, and for clay they disagree a lot. That isn’t a mistake in either. Swell depends on moisture, how the soil is dug, and how tightly it was packed to begin with. FHWA’s own table notes that its factors can vary by a third either way. The Caterpillar figures come from dividing its in-ground weight by its loose weight.

So treat the range as real. If the cost of a short order is high, plan for the top. If a contractor or a soil report gives you a swell figure for your site, choose “Other” and enter it.

How much extra to order when filling

Loose dirt packs down after it’s placed, by rain, by its own weight, and faster if you compact it. Suppliers suggest different allowances:

• Gravelshop adds a fixed 15% to its fill dirt estimates.
• Soil Depot suggests 15% to 25% when the fill will be compacted, on top of 10% for waste.
• Bama Dirt suggests 5% to 10% for general jobs.

The dirt calculator starts at 15% and lets you change it. As a rough guide: 5% to 10% for a garden bed or a lawn top-up that won’t be compacted, 15% for general fill, and 20% to 25% for fill you’ll tamp or roll.

Structural fill is different. Fill under a slab, a driveway or a wall is compacted in layers to a specified density. FHWA lists loose loam at 2,070 to 2,360 lb per cubic yard and compacted loam at 3,520, which works out to about 1.5 to 1.7 loose yards for every finished yard. If your job has a compaction specification, get the quantity from the engineer or the contractor, not from a percentage.

Truckloads: volume and weight

A truck has two limits: how much fits in the bed, and how much weight it can legally carry. Light, fluffy soil fills the bed first. Wet clay or sand reaches the weight limit first, and the bed goes out part full.

In the dirt calculator, the truck size starts at 10 cubic yards. That’s only a starting figure, so replace it with your hauler’s number. Add the weight limit in tons if they give you one. The result tells you which limit is setting the number of trips.

Fill dirt or topsoil?

• Fill dirt is subsoil with little organic matter. It packs firmly and stays put. Use it to raise ground, fill holes and build up a base.
• Topsoil is the upper layer, with organic matter that plants need. Use it for lawns, beds and planters. It keeps settling as the organic matter breaks down, so it’s a poor choice under anything that must not move.
• Both. Many jobs use fill dirt for the bulk, then a few inches of topsoil on top where grass or plants will grow.

Common mistakes

1. Booking trucks for the size of the hole. The pile is 5% to 67% bigger, depending on the soil.
2. Ordering the exact in-place volume. Loose dirt settles. Without an allowance you end up low.
3. Leaving depth in inches. Six inches is 0.5 ft. The calculator takes inches so you don’t convert.
4. Treating a cubic yard as a ton. A loose cubic yard of fill dirt weighs 1.0 to 1.35 tons.
5. Forgetting the weight limit. A truck that’s “only two-thirds full” may already be at its legal weight.
6. Using the radius as the diameter. The circle shape wants the full width across.

What the dirt calculator can’t tell you

• Your soil. Real ground is a mix, and it changes with depth. The ranges cover typical soils, not yours in particular.
• Rock. Solid rock swells far more than soil when broken up, and it isn’t covered here.
• Sloped digs. The depth is treated as uniform. On a slope, use the average of a few measurements, or split the area into strips.
• Sloped sides. Deep holes are often dug with sides that slope back for safety, which adds volume. Measure the top and bottom and use the average.
• Disposal rules and fees. Where dirt can go, and what it costs, varies by area.

Before any dig, have underground utilities marked. In the US, call 811.

More project calculators

For mulch or concrete, where swell and weight don’t matter, the cubic yard calculator gives volume and bags. For gravel and river rock, the rock calculator gives tons. Building on the new grade? The concrete block calculator counts blocks and mortar, and the bitumen calculator covers an asphalt drive. To turn quantities into a quote, use the job estimate calculator.

Sources

• Caterpillar, “Material Density Tables to Help Estimate Earthwork Volumes”: loose and bank weights and load factors; definitions of bank, loose and compacted cubic yards.
• Federal Highway Administration, Federal Lands Highway Project Development and Design Manual, Earthwork Design, Exhibit 5.1-A: in-situ, loose and embankment densities and percent swell; the 1.25 and 0.65 to 0.85 cubic yard example.
• Gravelshop, Soil Depot and Bama Dirt calculator pages: settling and compaction allowances.
• Inch Calculator, soil calculator: 1.0 to 1.3 tons per cubic yard for dry, loose soil.
• All read on October 3, 2026.