Gravel Delivery Across Michigan's Clay, Sand and Bedrock

Go and look at the rut before you look at a product list. Its length in feet, its width in feet and how far it has dropped since frost came out of the ground are the three numbers that decide the order, and they outrank any label. Gravel delivery starts with a tape and a sketch on the back of an envelope. What changes from one end of this state to the other is what sits under the rut: soaked lake-plain clay in the southeast, loose outwash sand on the west side, swamp and shallow rock up north.

The catalogue is arranged for that spread of ground, and materials carry the names people actually use here, so 21AA and 22A appear where other parts of the country would say something else. The full material list shows size and grading for each one.

Clay that holds water into May: the southeast, the Thumb and Saginaw Bay

Flat former lake bed of clay, silty clay and clay loam, crossed here and there by old sandy beach ridges. Most of it drains slowly, and much of the land leans on ditches and tile to shed water at all. The effect shows up every spring. Frost leaves the ground, the soil below stays saturated, and a base laid thin under a drive turns into ruts behind one loaded trailer.

Two things follow from that. Base layers want depth, because a dense-graded stone spreads load across whatever is under it and soaked clay gives very little back. 21AA limestone is the usual layer under drives, pole barn pads and parking aprons, with 22A road gravel where a smaller top size suits an unpaved lane. Those are MDOT class names, the words a county crew and a supplier use to each other rather than anything certified with the load, so read the size and grading on each product page against what your own job calls for. Water also has to be given somewhere to go: perimeter drains, downspout runs and a curtain drain around a walkout want open washed stone such as #57 Stone or Drain Rock, never a mix with fines in it.

Sand on the west side, from the fruit belt up the Lake Michigan shore

Outwash plains, sandy moraines and dune sand near the water. This ground drains fast and holds almost nothing, which solves one problem and creates another. Drainage stone is rarely what the site needs. The trouble is bare sand leaving a slope or a ditch after heavy rain and a lake-effect melt, and beds that go dry by late July.

So orders here lean toward cover and structure rather than drainage: Shredded Mulch over beds, River Rock in a border or a dry creek line that carries roof runoff clear of the foundation, and screened topsoil to build a growing layer before seed or sod goes down. A drive on sand still wants a properly compacted base. Sand is a poor subgrade even when it is dry.

A shorter season and harder ground north of the bridge

Longer, colder winters in the northern Lower Peninsula and the Upper Peninsula, deep lake-effect snow in the snowbelts, a late thaw, and at the west end of the U.P. stony drift lying over ancient bedrock that breaks the surface in places. The working window runs from that late thaw into fall, and frozen ground stops compaction outright, so the sensible pattern is to plan the order over winter and spread it once the ground firms.

Frost reaches 42 inches under the Michigan Residential Code, and a building official can require deeper footings where local conditions call for it. Frost laws limit heavy trucks on state highways and many county roads through the thaw, and they can stay in force up north after they lift downstate. That is a scheduling fact worth planning around rather than arguing with.

Ice, high water and a shoreline that keeps moving

Stretches of Great Lakes shoreline in this state are designated high risk erosion areas, and snowmelt scours stream banks and roadside ditches well inland of the water. RipRap is the material for armoring a bank, a culvert outlet or a slope against waves and ice. Large River Rock takes the heavier decorative and erosion work where the look matters as much as the hold.

Gravel delivery arrives as a pile, so choose the spot first

Measure the area, settle on a depth, then run it through the material calculators. They turn length, width and depth into cubic yards and tons using this site's own published weight for each product, which is why shredded mulch at roughly 600 lb per cubic yard and 21AA at roughly 3,000 lb per cubic yard give wildly different tonnages out of the same shaped hole.

Set the quantity and a date on the product page. Delivery gets arranged at checkout from your ZIP code, and the truck needs a clear run to the spot where the load can be tipped. What the driver needs on site is worth two minutes before you pick that spot, particularly on a soft spring lane. The ordering questions page covers what usually comes up next, and how this storefront is run sets out what happens between checkout and the load arriving.