Gravel Delivery FAQ for Wisconsin Lanes, Lots and Lakeshores

The costliest mistake this page has to correct is a load of clean stone tipped onto a driveway. It looks right in the pile, it rolls under a tire, it never packs, and by the following spring it is in the ditch. That one error comes from a name rather than from bad judgment, so the questions below start with names and work forward from there.

Matching the name on your estimate to something in the catalogue

My contractor wrote dense graded base. I cannot find that in the catalogue. What do I order?

3/4" Traffic Bond. Dense graded base is the specification name, traffic bond is what Wisconsin yards sell it as, and some tickets say road gravel for the same thing. Two more translations worth knowing: stone dust is sold here as Screenings, and black dirt or pulverized topsoil is Top Soil. When a name still will not resolve, ignore it and compare the size and grading printed on the product page against what the estimate specifies. Sizes travel between counties. Names do not.

Specification numbers behave the same way. WisDOT sets dense graded base under Section 305, in 3/4 inch, 1 1/4 inch and 3 inch gradations, and breaker run under Section 311 as stone run through a primary crusher to 6 inches or less, used for subgrade correction rather than as a finished surface. Those are descriptions of material, not a badge anyone holds, so a road agency or engineering specification gets compared against the size and grading on each product page.

Building a stack on ground that thaws from the top down

I need a base layer and a surface layer. How do I plan both?

Treat them as two separate jobs with two separate numbers. The base is a compacted depth of traffic bond, laid in lifts and rolled, and it is what carries the load. The surface is thinner, goes on last, and is there to drive or walk on: Driveway Gravel on a lane, Walkway Gravel or screenings on a path. Calculate each layer on its own, because the depths differ and so do the weights, then order them together. Write both figures down before you start, since the base depth is a compacted figure and loose material will stand higher until it is rolled.

The low end of my lot is soft and wet. What do I put down first?

Breaker Run, which is stone taken through a primary crusher to 6 inches or less and used for exactly this. It gives you a thick, stable platform over soft ground before anything finer goes on top of it. Then deal with the water, because a sub-base alone will not. A crown that sheds to a ditch, a cross culvert under a lane, or a drain trench backfilled with clean stone. On the lake clays around Green Bay and the Fox Valley, and on the red clay plain near Lake Superior, the water is the whole problem: it cannot soak in and it cannot drain down while the subsoil below is still frozen.

Driveway layers, and how far a yard reaches

What goes under a driveway, and in what order?

Bottom to top. Strip the sod and topsoil first, because base laid over organic soil keeps settling. Shape the subgrade to the crown you want the finished surface to hold, since the base copies whatever shape it is given. On soft or wet ground, breaker run next as a sub-base. Then traffic bond as the compacted base, placed in lifts and rolled rather than tipped to full depth in one go. Then the surface layer. Ditches and culverts run alongside all of it, and most base failures in this state are drainage failures rather than depth failures.

How much ground does a cubic yard cover?

A cubic yard is 27 cubic feet, so coverage is 27 divided by the depth in feet. The site publishes the 3 inch figure as 108 square feet, and that is the one worth carrying in your head as a check on any estimate. Depth is the input that moves the total most: doubling it halves the coverage, and the material calculators will work out any other depth for you.

The Wisconsin working calendar

When in the year should the work actually be done?

Between the end of the spring thaw and the point in late autumn where the ground closes up. Frost will not compact, so a base built on frozen ground is a base you rebuild. Spring is the other constraint: Class II state highways and posted county, town and village roads carry weight limits while frost comes out, roughly early March into May, and the northern zones lift later than the south. Clay sites stay soft after the thaw and after heavy rain, so give them longer. Sandy Central Sands ground can usually be worked soon after the frost leaves, though the low wet parts and peat cannot.

The point where this needs an engineer rather than a tonnage

When is this a question for an engineer rather than a calculator?

When something has to be designed and signed off: a tall retaining wall, a structural footing, a culvert crossing, a shoreline stabilization on a lake with a high-water record, or any job where a permit is involved. Local officials and a licensed engineer or contractor settle those, on site. Come back afterwards with the depths and quantities they give you and order against those figures.

Two other pages finish the job. Quantities, an irregular area and the arithmetic behind a tonnage live in the calculators, one tool per material. Checkout, the tip and the marked spot are set out on the delivery page, and so is what to do when a lane eats more than you bought: order the balance on its own rather than reopening a load with a date on it. The published refund and order-change policy sits beside it. Once the names are settled, the full material list is where a quantity and a date get chosen.

My contractor wrote dense graded base and I cannot find it in the catalogue. What do I order?

Who operates Wisconsin Rock Supply?