Gravel & Rock Delivery in Cape Coral

Cape Coral is about a hundred and fifty miles from our yard and is unlike anywhere else we deliver. The city was platted around an enormous canal network — roughly four hundred miles of it, more than any other city on earth — which means water frontage is the norm rather than the exception.

Building in Cape Coral

Seawalls are the defining workload. With that much canal frontage, seawall repair, replacement, toe protection and scour repair are continuous, and rip rap and armour stone are the materials that go with them.

Hurricane Ian accelerated all of it. Surge damage to seawalls and shorelines across the Cape produced years of repair work, much of it still running.

Before ordering stone: confirm the permitting. Work below mean high water here involves Lee County, FDEP and frequently the Army Corps. A load of rip rap sitting on an unpermitted job is an expensive problem a long way from a permitted yard.

The other large market is new construction on vacant lots. Huge areas of the Cape were platted decades ago and are only now being built out, one lot at a time. Each needs fill to raise grade, base for the drive, and #57 for drainage.

Residential landscape and pool work adds steady pea rock and fill sand demand.

Materials we deliver to Cape Coral

We carry 20 materials and will haul any of them here. These are the six Cape Coral orders most, with the specification detail you need to order correctly the first time.

Rip Rap in Cape Coral

Armour stone for the places where water is actively trying to take your property back.

Rip rap is specified by class, and the class is driven by how much energy the water carries. Sheltered canal banks in inland Broward take smaller stone than an exposed shoreline on the ocean side of the Keys, and a scour apron at a culvert outfall is sized for the velocity coming out of the pipe.

The general rule is that stone has to be heavy enough that design-storm flow cannot move it, and graded enough that smaller pieces fill the voids between larger ones so the mat locks up rather than acting as a pile of loose boulders. Almost every properly built installation also has a filter layer underneath — geotextile fabric, a bedding stone course, or both — to stop the soil beneath from washing out through the gaps. Rip rap placed directly on sand will eventually sink into it.

We are the supplier, not the engineer. If your project is permitted, the plan set will name the class and the layer thicknesses; send us that page and we will match it. If it is unpermitted seawall repair on your own property, tell us the exposure and we will tell you honestly what size the neighbours are using.

Full Rip Rap specification, coverage figures and FAQ →

Specification

What Cape Coral customers use it for

• Seawall toe protection and scour aprons
• Shoreline and canal bank armouring
• Slope stabilisation on retention ponds and lake banks
• Culvert and outfall headwall protection
• Living shoreline and mangrove edge stabilisation projects
• Temporary construction entrances and haul road crossings

Do I need a permit to put rip rap on my seawall?

Almost certainly, if any part of the work sits below the mean high water line. Depending on location that can involve FDEP, the South Florida Water Management District, the Army Corps of Engineers and a local marine permit. Confirm before ordering material.

Fill Dirt in Cape Coral

Bulk soil for moving grade. Cheap by the ton, and the material most often ordered in the wrong quantity.

Fill dirt is screened soil sold by the ton for moving volume. The word that matters is clean: no roots, no construction debris, no trash, no significant organic content. Organic material rots, and soil with organics in it keeps settling for years after you thought the job was finished.

Where a specification calls for structural fill, the requirements are tighter — a specified gradation and a compaction standard, usually verified by a testing lab. If your drawing says structural fill, tell us, because that is a different order from generic clean fill.

For most residential and light-commercial work — raising a low corner of a yard, building a pad, backfilling an old pool — clean fill is what you want and what we deliver.

Full Fill Dirt specification, coverage figures and FAQ →

Specification

What Cape Coral customers use it for

• Raising lot grade and correcting low spots
• Building up pads before base and slab work
• Backfilling excavations and old pool removals
• Landscape berms, mounds and contouring
• Filling behind retaining walls and seawalls
• General bulk volume where bearing is not critical

How many tons of fill dirt do I need?

Work out cubic yards (length × width × depth in feet, divided by 27), multiply by about 1.25 to get tons, then add 15 to 25 percent for compaction. Our tonnage calculator does this and converts to truckloads.

Limerock Base in Cape Coral

The material South Florida is built on. If it is paved, there is almost certainly limerock underneath it.

Limerock is mined limestone crushed and graded so that it runs the full range from roughly three and a half inches down to powder. That full gradation is the entire point. The coarse pieces carry load, the fines fill the voids between them, and when you add water and roll it, the fines cement the whole thing into a slab you can drive a loaded truck across.

South Florida sits on limestone, which means the material is quarried locally and hauled short distances — and that is why base here costs what it costs. In most of the United States, road base is crushed granite or gravel trucked in from a distance. Here, the Miami oolite formation in Miami-Dade and the Ocala limestone further north put the quarry inside the market.

You will see it written as limerock, lime rock and crushed limestone depending on who wrote the document, and heard as base rock or DOT base on site. Engineers specify it by FDOT section number. It is all the same product.

Full Limerock Base specification, coverage figures and FAQ →

Specification

What Cape Coral customers use it for

• Base course under asphalt roads, driveways and parking lots
• Base under concrete slabs, aprons and sidewalks
• Compacted base beneath paver installations
• Structural fill and sub-base where bearing capacity is specified
• Stabilised construction entrances and haul roads
• Pads for equipment, containers and modular buildings

What is the difference between limerock and crushed limestone?

Nothing meaningful in this market. "Crushed limestone" is the generic description, "limerock" is the South Florida term, and FDOT documentation calls it limerock base. Same material.

#57 Rock in Cape Coral

The workhorse drainage stone of South Florida. Open-graded, angular, and the default answer whenever water has to move through rock instead of sitting on it.

#57 is a gradation, not a rock type. The number comes from the AASHTO/ASTM sizing chart, and it describes stone that passes a 1-1/2 inch sieve and is retained on a No. 4 — in practice, pieces running roughly three-quarters of an inch to an inch, with the fines washed out.

In most of the country #57 is granite or trap rock. In South Florida it is crushed limestone, quarried locally, which is why it costs a fraction of what the same gradation costs in Georgia and why nearly every drainage detail on a Broward or Miami-Dade plan set specifies it. You will hear it called #57 stone by engineers and spec writers and 57 rock by everyone actually standing on the job. Same material.

The defining property is what has been removed. Because the fines are washed out, the stone will not knit together and will not compact. Stack it and it stays a pile of loose angular rock with roughly a third of its volume as open void. That void is the whole point: water runs straight through it instead of perching on top.

Full #57 Rock specification, coverage figures and FAQ →

Specification

What Cape Coral customers use it for

• French drains and trench drains — the standard backfill stone
• Septic drainfields and pump chambers
• Under-slab drainage layer beneath concrete
• Pipe bedding and backfill where flow matters more than support
• Coarse aggregate in ready-mix concrete
• Loose driveways and equipment pads where mud is the enemy
• Erosion control at downspouts and swale outfalls

Is #57 stone the same as #57 rock?

Yes. "Stone" is the term on plan sets and in ASTM/AASHTO documentation; "rock" is what it is called on job sites throughout South Florida. Both refer to the same washed, open-graded gradation running roughly 3/4" to 1".

Fill Sand in Cape Coral

Unwashed, inexpensive, and bought by the load. The volume sand for moving grade around a site.

Fill sand is the cheapest way to move a large volume of granular material onto a site. It is natural, unwashed sand — some silt content, variable gradation depending on where it came from — and it is bought when what you need is bulk and compactability rather than cleanliness.

The most common uses in our area are backfill and grade raising. Pool contractors use a lot of it for over-dig backfill. Septic installers use it around tanks and in drainfields. Site contractors use it to bring a lot up to grade before base goes down.

Because it is unwashed, it is not the right choice anywhere fines would cause a problem — not under pavers, not in concrete, not as drainage stone. For those, buy concrete sand or #57 rock.

Full Fill Sand specification, coverage figures and FAQ →

Specification

What Cape Coral customers use it for

• General site grading and grade raising
• Backfill around foundations, walls and structures
• Septic system installation and drainfield sand
• Pool backfill and over-dig fill
• Pipe bedding where a washed product is not specified
• Bulk volume fill beneath slabs and pads

What is the difference between fill sand and fill dirt?

Fill sand is granular, free-draining and compacts predictably — better under structures. Fill dirt is soil, cheaper, holds moisture, and is used for landscape grade changes and general volume.

Pea Rock in Cape Coral

Small, rounded and smooth underfoot. Called pea gravel everywhere else — in Florida it is pea rock.

Same material, different vocabulary. The rest of the country calls it pea gravel; South Florida calls it pea rock, and if you ask a yard here for pea gravel you will get a slight pause before they hand you the same thing.

It is a small, naturally rounded stone at about three-eighths of an inch nominal, washed clean, in a mix of tans, greys and off-whites. The rounded shape is what distinguishes it from #89 rock, which is a similar size but crushed and angular.

That difference drives where each one is used. Rounded feels good underfoot and looks softer, so pea rock goes on pool decks, paths and decorative areas. Angular locks under load, so #89 goes under pavers and around pipe.

Full Pea Rock specification, coverage figures and FAQ →

Specification

What Cape Coral customers use it for

• Pool deck surrounds and landscape borders
• Walkways, paths and courtyard surfaces
• Drainage beds and dry creek features
• Playground surfacing
• Exposed aggregate concrete finishes
• Ground cover in planting beds and side yards
• Under decks and in side-yard drainage runs

Is pea rock the same as pea gravel?

Yes. "Pea gravel" is the national term and "pea rock" is what it is called in South Florida. Same 3/8-inch rounded washed stone.

Choosing the right material

Most ordering mistakes are not quantity errors — they are the wrong material bought for the job. This is the short version of what goes where.

Not sure? Call and describe the job. We would rather spend two minutes on the phone than deliver the wrong thing.

Ground conditions in Lee County

Lee County construction is shaped by two things: an extraordinary amount of water frontage, and the rebuilding that followed Hurricane Ian in September 2022.

Canals, and a great many of them

Cape Coral alone has something in the region of four hundred miles of canals — more than any other city in the world. Add the Caloosahatchee, the barrier islands and the canal networks through Fort Myers, and the result is a seawall and shoreline market unlike anywhere else on this coast.

That means sustained demand for rip rap, armour stone and scour protection, and it means a lot of jobs where the drop point is a waterfront lot with limited frontage.

Rebuilding

Ian made landfall in this county, and the work that followed — elevation, seawall repair, drainage improvement, rebuilt structures — has run for years since. Fill, base and armour stone all move in volume as a result.

Vacant-lot infill

Lehigh Acres and parts of Cape Coral were platted decades ago into vast grids of individual lots, many of which are only now being built on. That produces a steady stream of single-lot new construction — each one needing fill, base and a driveway.

Getting a truck onto your Cape Coral site

The Cape has a good, wide street grid, which makes general access easier than most of the waterfront markets we serve.

The constraint is the canal lots themselves. Frontage is often limited, rear access to a seawall is frequently impossible for a loaded truck, and soft verges near the water will not take axle weight. Expect to stage material and move it with a machine on a fair share of seawall jobs.

Tell us which it is when you order — we would far rather plan for it than send a truck a hundred and fifty miles to find out.

Timing the work around the weather

South Florida has two seasons that matter to anyone moving material, and planning around them is worth real money.

Wet season, roughly May to October

Afternoon storms are close to daily and they are heavy. Three practical consequences:

• Ground goes soft fast. A site that carried a loaded truck on Monday may not on Wednesday. A tri-axle raising its bed puts enormous load through the rear axles, and we would far rather drop on firm ground near the road than bury a truck on your lot.
• Compaction gets harder. Base and fill compact best at near optimum moisture. Saturated material pumps under a roller instead of densifying, and no amount of extra passes fixes it.
• Uncovered piles absorb water. Topsoil and fine sand are worst affected — a soaked pile is significantly harder to spread. Tarp anything that will sit more than a day or two.

Dry season, roughly November to April

Better ground, easier compaction, and the busiest construction period of the year — which means pits and trucking are in higher demand and lead times stretch. Book earlier than you would in August.

The exception is asphalt millings, which want heat. Millings laid and rolled in June bind within days; the same load in January can take weeks and may need re-rolling.

Hurricane season, June through November

Two effects. Before a storm, demand for rip rap and shoreline protection spikes and everything gets tight. Afterwards, cleanup and repair work absorbs regional trucking capacity for weeks.

If your project involves shoreline protection, do it in the spring. Trying to armour a seawall with a named storm in the forecast is how people end up paying premium rates for whatever stone is left.

Working out how much you need

Material is sold by the ton. Plans are drawn in cubic yards. That mismatch is where most ordering errors come from, and they are expensive in both directions — running short stops a crew, and over-ordering by a large margin ties up money in a pile.

The arithmetic: multiply length by width by depth in feet, divide by 27 to get cubic yards, then multiply by the material's weight per yard. Most rock runs about 1.35 to 1.4 tons per cubic yard; compacted base is heavier at roughly 1.65; topsoil is lighter at about 1.15.

Then allow for compaction. Base and fill lose roughly 20 to 25 percent of their loose volume once they are properly compacted, so the tonnage you order should be above the theoretical plan volume. Our tonnage calculator builds that allowance in and converts the answer into truckloads.

Order slightly heavy. Two extra tons in a pile costs almost nothing and always gets used. Two tons short on a Friday afternoon costs you a whole extra delivery and a crew standing around.

How ordering works

There is no account to open and no portal to log into. You tell us the material, the tonnage, the site address and when you need it on the ground, and we come back with a locked, all-in delivered price — usually within the hour during business hours.

That price includes the haul. We quote delivered, not ex-pit, so the number we give you is the number on the invoice. If you are comparing quotes, check whether the other one has trucking in it.

What we need from you

• Material and gradation. If you are working from a plan set, send us the page — it saves a conversation.
• Quantity in tons, or the dimensions. If you have length, width and depth we will work the tonnage out. The tonnage calculator does it too.
• Site address and access notes. Overhead wires, gate widths, soft ground, HOA windows, where exactly the pile goes.
• When you need it. Same-day, a date, or a window against a construction programme.

Payment

First-time customers are COD or prepay for the first few loads. Once there is a clean payment history we move qualified customers onto standard credit terms with a signed credit application. We take ACH, check and major cards, and terms are confirmed at quote rather than negotiated at delivery.

On jobs where we are delivering material to real property we can preserve lien rights under Florida statute by filing a Notice to Owner within 45 days of first delivery. It protects everyone in the payment chain, and it means we get paid, which means you keep getting material on time.

Areas we cover in Cape Coral

Cape Coral, Pelican, Yacht Club, Tarpon Point, Burnt Store, Sandoval, Bimini Basin, Matlacha border, the Del Prado corridor and the Pine Island Road corridor.

If your street is not on that list, we still deliver there — it is not an exhaustive index, just the areas we are asked about most.

Cape Coral — common questions

Lee County — general questions

Nearby cities we also serve

All of Lee County → · Full service area →