Excavation Calculator — Cubic Yards of Dirt & Truckloads to Haul

An excavation calculator answers the two questions that decide a dig job's price: how many cubic yards of dirt am I removing, and how many dump truck loads will it take to haul that dirt away? Get the first number wrong and your hole is too shallow or your spoil pile is bigger than the yard; get the second wrong and the hauling bill blows the budget. This tool does the volume math, applies a swell factor for loose soil, and always rounds up to whole truckloads — because a hauler charges for the trip whether the bed is full or not.

The starting point is bank volume — the dirt as it sits packed in the ground. It's the same length × width × depth math as any excavation, with every dimension in feet:

• Bank volume (cu ft) = length × width × depth. A 20 ft × 20 ft pad dug 2 ft deep is 20 × 20 × 2 = 800 cubic feet.

• Bank cubic yards = cubic feet ÷ 27. So 800 ÷ 27 = 29.63 cubic yards. That's how much of the earth you're taking out of the hole.

Here's the part topsoil and gravel calculators skip: dirt swells when you dig it. Packed earth breaks apart into clumps and air gaps the moment a bucket lifts it, so the loose pile you load into a truck takes up more room than the hole it came from. That expansion is the swell factor, and for typical soil it runs about 25%:

• Loose volume = bank volume × (1 + swell% ÷ 100). 29.63 bank cu yd × 1.25 = 37.04 loose cubic yards of dirt to haul.

Now the trucks. A standard tandem dump truck carries roughly 12 cubic yards of loose soil, so:

• Truckloads = round up (loose cu yd ÷ truck capacity). ceil(37.04 ÷ 12) = 4 loads.

This calculator owns the dirt-removal side of site work and is deliberately distinct from topsoil, gravel and sand calculators — those size up fill you're bringing in, and they don't swell. Here you're measuring spoil going out. Enter your length, width and depth, pick a swell factor for your soil type (sand and gravel swell less; heavy clay swells more), set the truck capacity your hauler runs, and the tool reports bank yards, loose yards and whole truckloads in one shot. Sandy soil might swell 10–15%; common loam sits near 25%; dense clay and rock can swell 30% or more, which is exactly why the loose pile always looks bigger than the hole.