What Is a Cubic Yard?

Call a landscape supplier and the first question is usually "How many yards do you need?" It is easy to picture a football field or a length of fabric, but the person on the phone means something else: cubic yards, a measure of how much space your mulch, soil or gravel will fill. This guide explains what a cubic yard is, how big it looks in real life, how it differs from the units it gets mixed up with, and how to work out how many you need.

The Short Answer

A cubic yard is a unit of volume. It is the amount of space held by a cube whose every edge is 1 yard, or 3 feet, long. Multiply the three sides, 3 × 3 × 3, and you get 27 cubic feet, the same for every cubic yard. In metric terms that is about 0.765 cubic meters.

Bulk materials across the United States are sold this way. Topsoil, compost, mulch, sand, gravel and ready mix concrete are quoted and delivered by volume, and almost everyone in the trade shortens the name to a "yard." To skip the arithmetic for your own project, the cubic yard calculator turns length, width and depth into an order quantity for any shape.

Where the Unit Comes From

The unit is built from the yard, an old English unit of length that lives on in both the US customary and British imperial systems. For a long time the yard was defined by physical reference bars, and the American and British yards differed by a tiny fraction. In 1959 the countries that use these units agreed on shared definitions tied to the meter. As NIST explains, the foot became exactly 0.3048 meters, which makes the yard exactly 0.9144 meters.

A cubic yard is that length cubed: 0.9144 × 0.9144 × 0.9144 = 0.764554857984 cubic meters, with no rounding at all. Every conversion in this guide, and in our calculators, starts from that definition, as our methodology page explains.

How Big Is a Cubic Yard?

Numbers on a delivery ticket are easier to trust once you can picture them. Run a tape measure out to 36 inches along the floor, 36 inches to the side and 36 inches straight up, and the box you have traced is one cubic yard. Inside it you could stack 27 one foot cubes: three across, three deep and three high.

Everyday comparisons

• Wheelbarrows: a typical 6 cubic foot wheelbarrow takes 4½ loads to move one yard, so plan on five trips.
• Bags of mulch: one yard fills about 13½ of the common 2 cubic foot bags.
• Five gallon buckets: roughly 40 of them, since each bucket holds about two thirds of a cubic foot.
• A pickup bed: a full size bed about 6½ feet long and 5 feet wide, with 1.7 foot sides, holds roughly 2 cubic yards when filled level. That suits light mulch, but a single yard of gravel or soil can weigh more than a light pickup is built to carry.

If you are buying bags rather than bulk, our guide to how many bags are in a cubic yard works out the count for every common bag size.

What it looks like spread out

Tipped onto a driveway, one yard makes a fairly modest pile. Raked out, it goes a long way: 1 inch deep it covers 324 square feet, at 3 inches it covers 108 square feet, and at 6 inches it covers 54. The thinner the layer, the further it reaches, which is why the depth you choose changes your order more than anything else. Our guide to how much area a cubic yard covers has the full chart by depth.

Abbreviations: yd³, cu yd and CY

The same unit appears in several forms, sometimes on a single quote:

• yd³ is the scientific style, read aloud as "cubic yards."
• cu yd or cu. yd. shows up on price lists and invoices.
• CY is common on contractor estimates and delivery tickets, as in "4 CY of topsoil."
• Yards on its own is how most people say it. In a landscaping or concrete conversation, "3 yards" nearly always means 3 cubic yards.

That last habit causes most of the confusion, because a yard is also a length.

How It Compares With Other Units

Most ordering mistakes start with mixing it up with a unit that sounds close. Here is how they differ.

Cubic yard vs. yard

A yard is a length of 3 feet, the unit used for fabric and football fields. A cubic yard is a volume. When a supplier talks about "a yard of mulch," they always mean the cubic kind.

Cubic yard vs. square yard

Square yards measure a flat surface with no thickness, 9 square feet each, which is why flooring is often sold that way. Volume only appears once you add depth: cover one square yard of ground 3 feet deep and you have exactly one cubic yard. If your plan lists an area, our guide to converting square feet to cubic yards shows how to bring in the depth.

Cubic yard vs. cubic foot

A cubic foot is a box 1 foot on each side, and it takes 27 of them to fill one yard. Bagged products are usually labeled in cubic feet while bulk deliveries come by the yard, so you often need to switch between the two. The guide to how many cubic feet are in a cubic yard covers both directions.

Cubic yard vs. cubic meter

Most of the world buys bulk material by the cubic meter instead. A cubic meter is a little bigger: 1 cubic meter is about 1.31 cubic yards, and 1 cubic yard is about 0.76 cubic meters. When a product sheet or an overseas quote gives cubic meters, multiplying by 1.308 turns them into the US figure.

Cubic yard vs. ton

A cubic yard measures space and a ton measures weight, and the two only line up once you know the material's density. A yard of bark mulch might weigh 400 to 800 pounds. Fill the same space with gravel and it weighs roughly 2,600 to 3,400 pounds. That gap matters for trailer limits and for quarries that quote by the ton. For the weight of each common material, see our cubic yards to tons conversion guide.

One Cubic Yard in Other Units

Going the other way, one cubic foot is 1/27 of a cubic yard, about 0.037.

Where the Unit Is Used

Almost anything sold or hauled in bulk is measured this way. These are the places most people meet the unit.

Landscaping and gardening

Mulch, topsoil, compost and decorative stone are sold by the yard at landscape suppliers and nurseries. The Mulch Calculator and Gravel Calculator turn bed and path sizes into yards, and the gravel one adds the weight in tons.

Concrete

Ready mix plants batch and charge by the cubic yard, and many set a minimum load or add a fee for small orders. Running short halfway through a pour is the costly mistake, so the Concrete Calculator gives the yards for slabs, footings and columns, plus bag counts for small jobs.

Excavation and hauling

Dirt, fill and debris travel in trucks whose beds are rated in cubic yards, and rental dumpsters are named for their volume, with 10, 20, 30 and 40 yard sizes among the most common.

Bank, loose and compacted yards

Earthmoving adds a twist, because the same dirt takes up a different amount of room depending on its state. In the ground it is measured in bank cubic yards. Once dug, it loosens and swells, so it fills more loose cubic yards in a truck. Packed back down as fill, it shrinks into fewer compacted cubic yards. A hole of 10 bank yards can fill a truck with 12 or more loose yards, so plan for that extra bulk when you arrange hauling.

How to Work Out What You Need

The method is the same for every material: measure the length, width and depth in feet, multiply them, and divide by 27.

Take a garden bed 15 feet long and 4 feet wide that needs mulch 3 inches deep. Three inches is 0.25 feet, so 15 × 4 × 0.25 = 15 cubic feet, and 15 ÷ 27 = 0.56 cubic yards. Round up to whatever your supplier sells.

Curves, circles and odd shapes take a little more work. Our step by step guide to calculating cubic yards covers the shortcuts, or you can let our calculator handle the geometry.

Common Ordering Mistakes

• Mixing inches and feet. A 3 inch layer is a quarter of a foot. Multiply by 3 instead of 0.25 and you would order twelve times too much.
• Ordering from an area alone. A square footage from a plan has no depth, and without a depth there is no way to know the volume.
• Forgetting that loose material settles. Fresh mulch and soil sink a little after rain and watering, so the finished layer ends up slightly thinner than the day it was spread.
• Assuming every yard weighs the same. A trailer that carries a yard of mulch with ease may be overloaded by a yard of wet soil.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is a cubic yard the same as a yard?

Not quite. A yard on its own is a length of 3 feet. In bulk material sales, though, "a yard" is shorthand for a cubic yard, so a yard of topsoil means 27 cubic feet of it.

Is a cubic yard 3 by 3 by 3 feet?

Yes. A cube measuring 3 feet in every direction holds exactly one cubic yard. The space does not have to be a cube, though. A bed 9 feet long, 3 feet wide and 1 foot deep holds the same amount.

Is a cubic yard more than a ton?

They measure different things, so it depends on the material. A yard of mulch weighs well under a ton, while the same volume of gravel or concrete weighs more than one.

How many gallons are in a cubic yard?

About 202 US gallons. A US gallon is 231 cubic inches and a cubic yard is 46,656 cubic inches, so 46,656 ÷ 231 = 201.97.

Final Thoughts

A cubic yard is simply 27 cubic feet of space, a 3 foot cube that sets the price of almost every bulk material in the United States. Keep three things in mind when you order: it is a measure of space rather than surface or weight; suppliers call it a "yard"; and the depth you choose moves the number more than anything else. Measure carefully, round up to what your supplier sells, and the pile in your driveway should be just about right.