ton vs. yards

[da'yoop]

ok.....I'm kinda new to this. I'm trying to figure out the difference between tons and cu. yds. Is it different from one type of material to another?
Is it close enough to call it the same? A guy tells me he wants 5 yds. of topsoil and I go get it. The place I get it from sells it by the ton. So do I get 5 ton or 6 ton or what? Another guy wanted 5 yds. of mason sand. Is that going to be different ratio than topsoil? What do you guys do?

 

[BB64]

I keep an ancient calendar that has tables at the front with useful data like this, including maximum conveyable angles in my glovebox... but to answer your question, I found tables at http://daveosborne.com/dave/articles/material-weights.php and http://www.erbequipment.com/rental/materialweights.htm by googling "material weights".

{tried to cut & paste table data but the columns got all fouled up, sorry!}

Good luck!

 

[da'yoop]

Thanks.......I'll go check it out. I'm kind of suprised there aren't more responses :beatsme

 

[Raildudes dad]

If they are selling by the ton and you want say 5 yards, the seller should know the capacity of his loader bucket in yards. We had a Cat 966 with a 5 yard bucket. When we loaded our trucks, 1 bucket was approximately 5 yards. You can google unit weights of different materials and figure out what you need. Any more questions, post them or PM if you want, and I'll try to help

 

[Orchard Ex]

Is it different from one type of material to another?
Is it close enough to call it the same?

Think of it this way: If you have a 15 cubic yard box on the truck and filled it level to the top with Styrofoam packing peanuts or you filled it level to the top with concrete which load would have the DOT man giggle like a school girl?

 

[da'yoop]

Think of it this way: If you have a 15 cubic yard box on the truck and filled it level to the top with Styrofoam packing peanuts or you filled it level to the top with concrete which load would have the DOT man giggle like a school girl?

HHHMMMMMMMMM.........I hate these trick questions....lol. Ok, I get that there are different weights for the same volume of different materials (what weighs more, a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers). It's just that when a customer wants say 15yds and I haul 2 loads with my s/a truck, am I giving him 15yds. or 13 or 16? My box holds 8yds w/sideboards but I try to haul about 7.5yds. It's not a big deal, it's just that when a customer walks up to my first load and says "is that 5 yds? and I say no, that's 7.5, I'm not that confident that I'm right. The supplier has a scale of course, so I know the weight, just guessing on the yds.
Thanks everybody for the answers....I'm getting a better idea now.

 

[amscontr]

It depends on the material, a yard of mulch might weigh 900 lbs. a yard of dirt 3000 lbs.(depending on moisture etc.).
5 yards of topsoil might weigh 7-8 tons.
It depends on the topsoil too, if it has been screened or if it is virgin soil that's compacted.

 

[rabbit]

HHHMMMMMMMMM.........I hate these trick questions....lol. Ok, I get that there are different weights for the same volume of different materials (what weighs more, a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers). It's just that when a customer wants say 15yds and I haul 2 loads with my s/a truck, am I giving him 15yds. or 13 or 16? My box holds 8yds w/sideboards but I try to haul about 7.5yds. It's not a big deal, it's just that when a customer walks up to my first load and says "is that 5 yds? and I say no, that's 7.5, I'm not that confident that I'm right. The supplier has a scale of course, so I know the weight, just guessing on the yds.
Thanks everybody for the answers....I'm getting a better idea now.

For some reason this is hard for a lot of people to understand. By the ton and by the yard in your instance is different. 1st you have to know how much the material weighs. Selling and buying by the weight is the fairest for you and your customer. What you can get into the truck depends on how much weight you can legally carry. One type of material (like peat) may be loaded up to the side boards and still be in the legall limit. Another type of material (like crushed river rock) may not even reach the top of the side rails without side boards.
Calculating how much is in the truck or in a loader bucket is misleading, because the material is loose and not in a compacted state. Thats why when you figure it by the ton you are getting a true picture of the inplace material.
That said a lot of people want to sell by the loose truck yard because it is easier to guess at what you are carrying. If you work for any agency you will find this is not acceptable.

:usa

 

[Kgmz]

The pit, quarry, etc. where you buy materials should have a chart telling you how much a yard of the materials weigh.

For example around here most gravels are about 1.3 to 1.4 tons per yard. Also the pits here have scales on their loaders, so if I go in and tell them I need 16 tons in the truck and 16 tons on the trailer they can get pretty close. And when I scale out of the pit I will know how good they were.

So if I only needed to get 5 yards, I would tell them to load me with 7 tons of material at 1.4 tons to the yard. You also need to know this for pricing to your customers if selling by the yard. Say that ton of gravel costs $6 a ton, your cost would be per yard would be $8.40.

 

[rabbit]

The pit, quarry, etc. where you buy materials should have a chart telling you how much a yard of the materials weigh.

For example around here most gravels are about 1.3 to 1.4 tons per yard. Also the pits here have scales on their loaders, so if I go in and tell them I need 16 tons in the truck and 16 tons on the trailer they can get pretty close. And when I scale out of the pit I will know how good they were.

So if I only needed to get 5 yards, I would tell them to load me with 7 tons of material at 1.4 tons to the yard. You also need to know this for pricing to your customers if selling by the yard. Say that ton of gravel costs $6 a ton, your cost would be per yard would be $8.40.

Yes!! Thats what I'm talking about. :usa

 

[Turbo21835]

Think of it this way: If you have a 15 cubic yard box on the truck and filled it level to the top with Styrofoam packing peanuts or you filled it level to the top with concrete which load would have the DOT man giggle like a school girl?

Around here he gets the giggles over the packing peanuts. Since they are impossible to keep in the box while going down the road, he will get ya for unsecure load

 

[Hendrik]

ok.....I'm kinda new to this. I'm trying to figure out the difference between tons and cu. yds. Is it different from one type of material to another?
Is it close enough to call it the same? A guy tells me he wants 5 yds. of topsoil and I go get it. The place I get it from sells it by the ton. So do I get 5 ton or 6 ton or what? Another guy wanted 5 yds. of mason sand. Is that going to be different ratio than topsoil? What do you guys do?

Cubic yards/feet/meters is a volume measurement, whereas tons/tonnes/pounds is a weight measurement.
You do need to have a basic understanding of how much weight is in a volume because when you try and work out how much material has to come out or into a job you work out the volume of material and then have to convert it to weight in order to get some idea of costs.
Say you go to quote a job which involves removing dirt for a pool installation, you need to work out how many cubic meters of material has to come out of the hole (lets say it's 10 meters by 5 meters by 2 meters, this gives you 100 cubic meters) now you have to convert the cubic meters to weight in order to figure out how many truckloads there are and how much it will cost to dump the material. I generally work on about 1.8 tonnes per cubic meters, so that means I have 180 tonnes of dirt to shift.
Same deal if you are bringing material into a job, say you have to prep a site for concreting. First you work out if you have to take out soil to get to the level where you want to be at, in order to put down the base material.
Measure the square meters, set up a laser level, work out your levels over the site and then determine how much soil has to come out, if any.
Lets say it's an area 30 meters long and ten meters wide, that's 300 square meters. The plan calls for 7 cm of base material and 100 cm of concrete, so you have to be 170 cm below where the top of the concrete has to end up. The laser level tells you that you have to take out an average of 5 cm across the site, so you multiply 300 by .05 which gives you 15 cubic meters of material to go out, multiply this by 1.8 to give you 28 tonnes.
Now that the site is level you need to work out how much base material you have to spread out in order to get to the level required for concreting, multiply 300 by .07 which is 21 cubic meters, the people supplying the base material should know how many tonnes of base material is in a cubic meter. Multiply the figure they give you by 21 to know how many tonnes of base material you have to bring in and spread.
Jobs done, time to knock off.

 

[mitch504]

I honestly did have a truck hauling crushed styrofoam; a dipstick tailgated it for miles, then called 911 and claimed the scratches and DENTS in his car were caused by material falling off of it.

 

[vtcntrctr]

The most important issue for me with yard vs. tons is moisture.

the more moisture a product contains, the more it weighs, so 1 1/2 crushed doesn't change too much when it's wet. Bark mulch or topsoil could change by quite a lot. When I buy crushed I'd prefer it to be done by the ton. But if I was buying topsoil (on a wet day) I'd have a bit of an issue with it being done by the ton. Sand is in the middle, and if it's particularly wet, I'll talk to my supplier about making it right. Generally when I pickup material by the yard for the first time, I'll hop out of the truck and do a quick measurement of their loader to know how much I'm getting. I've made the operator call out the manager on an occasion or two (IE the op. said this is a 1/2 yard, and I measured closer to .3 of a yard)

 

[tuney443]

The most important issue for me with yard vs. tons is moisture.

the more moisture a product contains, the more it weighs, so 1 1/2 crushed doesn't change too much when it's wet. Bark mulch or topsoil could change by quite a lot. When I buy crushed I'd prefer it to be done by the ton. But if I was buying topsoil (on a wet day) I'd have a bit of an issue with it being done by the ton. Sand is in the middle, and if it's particularly wet, I'll talk to my supplier about making it right. Generally when I pickup material by the yard for the first time, I'll hop out of the truck and do a quick measurement of their loader to know how much I'm getting. I've made the operator call out the manager on an occasion or two (IE the op. said this is a 1/2 yard, and I measured closer to .3 of a yard)

I completely agree here--there's absolutely no reason to pay for water.Years ago at Traprock,we used to tell the weighmaster the material[Item 4 or screenings] was wet and he would take off a ton or 2.This was before computers of course so now this can't be done.

To answer the Op's question though---what I do every Spring when I get all the new price sheets from gravel banks/quarries that sell by weight is do my conversions over to yards like this:Example--Item 4--typical weight in my area is 2800-2900 lbs per yd.,average moisture content.$20 or so per ton so I set up the equation of $20 is to 2000 as X is to 2800----X will be the cost per yd.-simple.Of course you need to know what the products weigh.It also helps if you thoroughly know your truck---is it 5 yds or 7 yds? After some experience it gets easier to decipher what you've got.To keep things simple,I only sell by the yard and try to be as fair as possible.Some times it works out to the customer's benefit,sometimes to mine.If you try and sell by weight,you can often times lose your shirt if the material is soaking wet and you've committed to a price beforehand.

 

[TriHonu]

Here are some charts and explanations you may find helpful.

Soil Volume Conversions - is an extract from an Army Manual that describes the 3 states of soils, Bank, Loose and Compacted.

The other 2 files list general weights of materials per yard or cubic meter.

If the customer wants 8 yards, the question you have to ask is what is the customer going to do with the soil? If he calculated he needs 10 yards and he is going to compact it, he will need more (tons) of material than if he wants 10 yards that will settle back to bank state.

For example customer needs 10 yards of sub-base that will be compacted to a specific elevation for a building slab. You will need to provide tonnage by compacted state.

Different customer wants 8 yards of top soil to level a lawn. Customer will spread loose, plant seed and the soil over time will return to bank state as it naturally settles. So you need to provide the tonnage by bank state.

Both of these loads will require you to make two trips since a yard of loose soil that they load in the truck is lighter and more tonnage is required to provide the amount of soil the customer actually needs based on settling or compaction at time of installation.