About Wisconsin Rock Supply: Ordering, Not Queuing

This is not a yard you back a trailer into. There is no scale house, no counter and no line of farm trucks at seven in the morning waiting on a loader. What you can do from a kitchen table in February, with the lane still frozen, is settle the material, settle the tonnage, put in the ZIP code and pick a date for a dump truck to bring it out. That is the whole of it, and the rest of this page is the detail.

Twenty-four materials, ordered online and tipped from a truck

Bulk aggregate, in truck quantities, ordered online. Twenty-four materials, starting at breaker run under a build and ending at shredded mulch on a bed. Each product page carries the size, the grading and the type, which is what you compare against a spec if an engineer or a road agency has written one for your job.

Two things this page will not do. It will not tell you a yard is around the corner, because delivery is arranged by ZIP code at checkout rather than from a fixed address. And it will not tell you what your subgrade is, because nobody can do that from a screen. The ground descriptions on this site are general to a region, not to your lot.

Catalogue named the way Wisconsin yards name it

Half the ordering mistakes in this state are naming mistakes. Someone reads dense graded base on an estimate, searches for it, finds nothing under that name and orders clear stone instead, which never packs.

3/4" Traffic Bond is the material specified as dense graded base and sold in this state as traffic bond. Some yards also write road gravel on the ticket.
Breaker Run is the coarse sub-base that goes under it, taken through a primary crusher, meant for correcting soft or wet ground.
Screenings is what stone dust is called here, and it is the bedding layer under pavers and flagstone.
Top Soil is what many buyers know as black dirt, and it is sold pulverized so it spreads fine.

WisDOT specifies the dense graded family under Section 305 and breaker run under Section 311. Those designations describe how material is named and graded in Wisconsin. They are not a certification held by this storefront.

Working out the quantity before the card comes out

The material calculators take a shape, measurements in feet, a depth in inches and a material, then return cubic yards, tons and cubic feet. The material choice matters because the weight is built into it: a cubic yard of screened topsoil is published here at about 2,200 lb, and a cubic yard of riprap at about 3,100 lb. Same volume, and the tonnage on the order moves with it.

Two habits save a second order. Measure to the finished edge rather than the lawn line, and take depth in more than one spot, because an old drive is never worn evenly. If a job has a base layer and a surface layer, run each one as its own calculation.

ZIP code, date and dump spot, all chosen at checkout

Pick the quantity on the product page.
Enter the delivery ZIP code. That is what sets up the delivery for your address.
Choose a delivery date from the calendar shown.
Material arrives by dump truck and is tipped as a single pile where you have marked.
The truck needs about 12 feet of clear width and nothing hanging low over the route, which is worth walking before you order rather than on the morning.

The delivery page goes through the access and drop-spot detail properly, and the FAQ answers the questions that come up between checkout and the truck arriving.

What needs someone standing on the site

There is a line past which a catalogue and a calculator stop being enough. A retaining wall above a certain height, a shoreline stabilization on a lake with a high-water record, a culvert crossing, a structural footing, anything where a permit or a design has to be signed. Get a local engineer or contractor on the ground for those, then come back with the depths and quantities they give you and order against them.

For everything short of that, pick the material, run the numbers and choose a date. If the measurements are awkward, send them through with the ZIP code and the depth you have in mind.

Common questions

Is there a yard I can drive to and load myself?

No. Orders are placed online and delivered by dump truck to the address you enter, which means what you choose is the material, the tonnage, the ZIP code and the date. If you need a small quantity you can shovel out of a pickup, a local landscape supply counter is the better call. This is set up for loads that come off a truck as a pile.

My contractor wrote a material name I cannot find in the catalogue. What now?

Check the naming section above first, because it is usually traffic bond, breaker run or screenings under a different label. If it still does not match, compare the size and grading printed on the product page against what the estimate specifies. That comparison settles it more reliably than the name does, since names shift between yards and counties.

Can I order a base material and a surface material together?

Yes. Calculate each layer separately, since they have different depths and different weights, then place them in the same order. It is worth writing the two figures down before you start, because the base depth is a compacted depth and the surface layer is usually thinner than people expect.

Do you know what my subgrade is?

Not from here. The soil notes on this site describe regions: red clay along the Lake Superior plain, lake clays around Green Bay and the Fox Valley, glacial till and outwash through the north, deep sand in the Central Sands, silt loam over bedrock in the Driftless. Your lot may sit on any of those, or on a graded mix a builder left behind. Dig a test hole before you commit to a depth.

About Wisconsin Rock Supply and What Ordering Aggregate Here Involves