What a Gravel Driveway Costs
A new gravel driveway costs $2 to $6 per square foot installed, so a 12 × 50 ft drive is roughly $1,200 to $3,600. Stone is sold by weight: dense-grade base runs $20 to $45 a ton and #57 stone $30 to $60, and delivery is a flat $80 to $250 per load on top. A 4 in depth over that drive is 7.4 cubic yards, which at the density of crushed stone is a little over 10 tons — one delivery.
A gravel driveway is three layers doing three different jobs, and the commonest mistake is buying one stone for all of them. Clean stone drains and never locks together; crushed stone with fines locks together and holds a vehicle. Order the wrong one and the driveway ruts in a season.
Clean stone against crusher run
Number 57 stone is washed and roughly three-quarters of an inch with nothing smaller. It drains beautifully and it will not compact, because there are no fines to fill the gaps. Driven on directly it moves under the tyre every time.
Crusher run, sold as #411, QP, or dense-grade, is the same rock with the fines left in. The fines pack into the voids under a roller and the layer behaves as a solid. Base courses are specified this way for exactly that reason.
Three layers, three depths
A working build is four to six inches of large base stone, three to four inches of crusher run, and one to two inches of surface stone. Under a car alone the base layer can be thinner; under anything that delivers on a lorry it cannot.
Compact each layer before the next goes on. A single ten-inch lift dumped and rolled once compacts at the top and stays loose underneath, which is a driveway that settles into wheel tracks by the second winter.
Fabric is cheaper than the stone it saves
Woven geotextile between subgrade and base stops the stone migrating down into soft ground. Without it, a driveway on clay quietly swallows its base layer and needs topping every few years.
It costs a fraction of a load of stone and is the single highest-return item in the build.
Buying by the ton when you measured in yards
Stone is quoted by the ton and measured by volume. Crushed stone runs roughly 1.4 to 1.5 tons per cubic yard, so a 10-cubic-yard driveway is about 14 to 15 tons, and ordering 10 tons leaves it a third short.
Delivery is usually priced per load with a minimum, so two small orders cost noticeably more than one correct one.
Typical costs, US, 2026
| Item | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Crusher run / dense-grade base, material | $20–$45 per ton |
| Number 57 stone, material | $30–$60 per ton |
| Delivery, per load | $80–$250 per load |
| Woven geotextile fabric | $0.3–$0.8 per sq ft |
| Grading and compaction, installed | $1.5–$4 per sq ft |
| New driveway, installed all in | $2–$6 per sq ft |
Excludes excavation of unsuitable soil, culverts and drainage, retaining edges, permits, and any apron where the driveway meets a public road, which is usually concrete and usually regulated.
Ranges as of 2026 and indicative rather than sourced from a price index. Use them to sanity-check a quote, not to replace one — regional labour rates move these figures more than any material choice.
Questions people actually ask
- How thick should a gravel driveway be?
- Eight to twelve inches total in three layers for a driveway that carries deliveries; six to eight is workable for cars only on firm subgrade. Depth in one lift is not the same as depth in three, because only a thin lift compacts all the way through.
- Which gravel should I order?
- Crusher run for base and for anything that has to hold a vehicle, because the fines let it lock together. Clean #57 only where drainage matters more than stability, or as a decorative top layer over a compacted base. Ordering #57 for the whole driveway is the classic error and it stays loose forever.
- How many tons is a cubic yard?
- About 1.4 to 1.5 tons for crushed stone, and it varies with the rock and how wet it is. Work out the volume first, then convert, and order to the ton figure — the yard is what you measured, the ton is what you are billed for.
- How often does it need topping up?
- Every three to five years for a surface layer, sooner on a slope or where snow is ploughed off it. A driveway that needs base stone rather than surface stone every few years is telling you the fabric was skipped.
Sources: AASHTO M 147 — materials for aggregate and soil-aggregate subbase, base and surface courses, ASTM D2940 — graded aggregate material for bases or subbases, US Federal Highway Administration — geosynthetic design and construction guidelines