Gravel Services

What counts as gravel here

"Gravel" is the word almost everyone uses when they call us, and it covers several different products. That is fine — tell us what the job is and we will tell you which one it actually needs.

In practice a request for gravel usually means one of these:

• #57 rock — the drainage workhorse. French drains, under-slab, septic drainfields. Washed and open-graded so water runs straight through it.
• Pea rock — small, rounded and smooth underfoot. Pool decks, paths, borders and play areas. Called pea gravel everywhere outside Florida.
• #67 rock — a half-step finer than #57, and the gradation the concrete and asphalt plants buy.
• #89 rock — small and angular, for pipe bedding and permeable paver systems.
• Crushed concrete — recycled, compactable and cheaper than virgin rock. The usual answer for a driveway that has to carry vehicles.
• Shell rock — light-coloured compactable base for drives, pads and ranch roads.

The first four are loose, washed stone. The last two compact into a firm surface. That distinction matters more than the name: if you need something you can drive on, you want a compacting material, not a loose one.

Which gravel for which job

Drainage

#57 rock, every time. The fines are washed out, so roughly a third of its volume is open void and water moves through it instead of perching on top. It is the standard backfill for French drains across South Florida because the water table here gives you no choice.

A driveway you park on

Not loose gravel. Rounded stone rolls under tyres and migrates to the edges, and angular washed stone walks around almost as badly. Use crushed concrete or shell rock, which compact into something firm, and consider asphalt millings as a wearing surface on top.

Pool decks, paths and borders

Pea rock. Rounded and comfortable barefoot, which matters enormously around a pool. Lay it two to three inches deep over landscape fabric and edge it, or it will migrate.

Under pavers

Depends on the system. Conventional pavers want a compacted base with exactly one inch of washed concrete sand on top. Permeable paver systems use #89 rock instead of sand. They are different details — do not mix them.

Ordering gravel — one yard or twenty loads

Minimum delivery is one cubic yard. If you need a single yard of pea rock to finish a planting bed, that is a normal order and we will bring it. At the other end we run twenty-plus tri-axle loads a day onto commercial sites with prior notice.

Gravel is sold by the ton and most of it runs about 1.35 to 1.4 tons per cubic yard, so a yard weighs somewhere near 2,700 pounds. A standard tri-axle carries about 22 tons, which is roughly 16 cubic yards.

Price per yard improves as the quantity rises, so if your job is close to a full load it is usually worth rounding up rather than ordering twice. Our tonnage calculator will convert your dimensions into tons and tell you how many loads that works out to.

One practical note: tell us where the pile goes when you order, not when the driver arrives. A loaded truck needs firm ground and roughly 25 feet of overhead clearance to raise its bed. On tight sites we can bring a smaller vehicle or stage nearby.

Our gravel, by name

Click any of these for gradation, weights, coverage figures and what it is actually for.

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.

Why contractors use us

We are a sourcing and trucking operation rather than a pit. That is the whole model, and it is worth understanding because it changes what we are good at.

We do not own a quarry, so we are not trying to sell you what our quarry happens to have. We buy from whichever pit, yard or recycler is closest to your job and has the material you actually specified, and we haul it to you. On a market this spread out — four counties and two hundred and forty road miles — that flexibility is usually worth more than owning a hole in the ground.

The practical version of that: one call, one invoice, one point of contact. If a job needs base rock, bedding sand, fill and drainage stone, that is one quote from us instead of four suppliers to chase, four deliveries to coordinate and four invoices to reconcile.

We are locally owned, based in Fort Lauderdale, and there is no call centre. When you ring, you get somebody who knows what a tri-axle can and cannot get into.