How Much Does Fill Dirt Cost? Per Yard and Per Load
The dirt is the cheap part. Common fill runs $8 to $15 a cubic yard, which is less than any other material on this site. Then the truck arrives, and on a small order the haul costs more than everything in it. So fill dirt cost is really a haulage question wearing a material’s name.
Your estimate
- The dirt
- $102 at $12 a yard for common fill. This is the cheap half, and on most jobs it is the smaller half.
- The haul
- $50 for 1 trip at 12 yards a load. That is 33% of the bill.
- Why the order beats the hole
- The hole measures 7.4 yards, but general fill / loam settles about 20% once it is compacted. Order the measured figure and you finish below grade and pay a second delivery to fix it.
- Before you pay for any of it
- Fill dirt is the one material on this site people give away. Any excavation nearby is paying to dispose of the same dirt you are paying to buy, so it is worth an hour of looking before you order.
- How this is worked out
- 200 sq ft × 12" ÷ 12 ÷ 27 = 7.41 yd³ × 1.20 = 8.89 yd³ × $12 = $102 + $50 haul = $152
What is fill dirt?
Subsoil. The layer that sits under topsoil, dug out of a foundation, a pool or a road cut somewhere and sold on. It holds no organic matter, which is the whole point of it.
That absence is what makes it useful. Organic matter rots, and rotting means the ground above it drops over the following years. Fill dirt has nothing left to decompose, so once it is compacted it stays where you put it. Backfill a wall with good garden soil and you will be topping up that trench for a decade.
The name is doing real work too. Soil scientists draw a line between soil and dirt, and it is not snobbery. Soil is a living structure, full of air pockets, fungal threads and roots holding it in shape. Dirt is that same material after it has been dug out and lost all of it. Fill dirt is sold as dirt because the digging already killed whatever made it soil.
Fill dirt cost per cubic yard
$8 to $15 for common fill, $12 to $25 for clean, and $15 to $30 for structural. The spread is about what was done to it before it reached the yard.
| Grade | Per yard | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Common fill | $8 to $15 | Whatever came out of a hole nearby. Fine under a slab or behind a wall |
| Clean fill | $12 to $25 | Screened of rubble, roots and rock. What a permit usually asks for |
| Structural fill | $15 to $30 | Graded and specified to compact to a known density under load |
| Subsoil | $8 to $15 | The layer under topsoil. Cheapest of the lot and it grows nothing |
Notice how narrow that whole column is. The gap between the cheapest fill and the dearest is about $22 a yard. Topsoil grades can differ by more than that on their own. Fill dirt barely varies because there is barely anything to vary.
So choosing a grade is not really a price decision. It is a question of what the fill has to do. The answer is usually common fill, unless something is being built on top of it.
Region moves these numbers more than grade does. Fill is heavy and cheap, so haulage distance dominates. A yard two towns over can quote half what the nearest one does. Ring three before you assume a price is normal.
Season moves them too. Digging season runs spring through autumn, and that is when the supply arrives, so winter often costs more for the same dirt.
Fill dirt cost per truckload
A 12 yard load of common fill is about $138 of dirt plus $50 to $150 to bring it. Call it $188 to $288 delivered.
But a load is not a fixed thing. Trucks run from about 10 yards up to 16. So two quotes for a load can differ by half again in what turns up. Ask for the yardage, not the load, when you are comparing.
| Order | Dirt | Haul | Total | Per yard |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 yd | $35 | $125 | $160 | $53 |
| 5 yd | $58 | $50 | $108 | $22 |
| 10 yd | $115 | $50 | $165 | $17 |
| 12 yd | $138 | $50 | $188 | $16 |
| 24 yd | $276 | $100 | $376 | $16 |
Read the last column down and the shape of this material becomes obvious. Three yards works out near $53 a yard against a headline price of $12. The haul and the short-load fee are spread over almost nothing.
Now look at where it flattens. Past about ten yards the per-yard figure stops moving much, because the delivery is finally spread thin enough to disappear into the material price.
So the cheapest way to buy fill dirt is to buy all of it at once. Two separate five yard orders cost meaningfully more than one order of ten, for the same dirt arriving on the same truck.
Delivered vs picked up
A pickup truck holds about half a cubic yard of dirt before it is over its rating. Fill dirt weighs roughly a ton a yard, so half a yard is already 1,000 lb sitting over the rear axle.
That makes collection realistic for a garden bed and useless for anything structural. Twenty trips in a half-ton pickup to save $50 is a whole weekend and a set of rear springs.
Where collection does pay is the very small job. Under a yard, most suppliers will load a trailer for the material price alone. You skip the delivery fee and the $75 short-load charge that lands on orders under 5 yards.
Ask about that short-load fee specifically. It is the line most quotes leave off until the invoice, and on a 3 yard order it is larger than the dirt.
What makes fill dirt cheaper than topsoil
Processing, mostly. Topsoil gets screened, often blended, and it is sold on a promise that things will grow in it. Fill dirt is sold on a promise that they will not.
The price of fill dirt also carries a quirk no other material here has: the supplier was frequently paid to acquire it. An excavator digging a basement has to put that soil somewhere, and disposal costs money. Selling it to you at $8 a yard is the second time that dirt has earned its owner something.
| Material | Per yard | Processed? | Grows things? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common fill | $8 to $15 | No | No |
| Clean fill | $12 to $25 | Screened | No |
| Screened topsoil | $20 to $50 | Screened | Yes |
About 3 times the price, for a layer that has to grow something. Which is why the right answer on most jobs is both, and fill dirt vs topsoil works out where one stops and the other starts. Pricing for the upper layer sits on topsoil cost per yard.
Clean fill vs unscreened fill
Clean fill has been run through a screen. No rubble, no root balls, no lumps of old concrete. Unscreened fill is whatever came out of the ground, and what came out of the ground varies by the bucketful.
The word clean also carries a legal meaning in most places, and it is worth knowing which one your supplier means. Clean fill in a permit sense means free of contamination, with paperwork behind it. Clean fill in a yard sense often just means screened.
For a low spot in a lawn, unscreened is fine and the saving is real. For anything under a slab, a footing or a retaining wall, screened is the only sensible choice. A buried root ball is a void waiting to appear once it rots.
If somebody is offering you free fill, this is the question to ask first. Free unscreened fill full of brick is not a bargain, it is a sorting job you have agreed to do without noticing.
Estimate your fill dirt cost
Measure the hole, add for settlement, then price the dirt and the haul as two separate things. The estimator above does exactly that, and it is the separation that matters rather than the arithmetic.
A 10 yard job at $12 a yard is $115 of dirt and $50 of delivery, so $165 all in. That is 30% of the bill spent on moving it rather than buying it.
Drop the same job to 3 yards and it inverts completely: $35 of dirt against $125 of haul and fees. The material becomes a rounding error. That is why small fill jobs cost so much per yard, and why splitting a load with a neighbor is worth a conversation.
Put your own numbers in the price boxes. Fill dirt is the most local material on this site. Its price is mostly the distance from the hole it came out of to the hole it is going into.
How to get free fill dirt
Start from who is trying to get rid of it. Anyone digging a basement, a pool or a foundation has soil they must pay to dispose of, and dumping fees are real money. Handing it to you is cheaper for them than trucking it to a landfill.
So the sources are the obvious ones once you think of it that way. Local excavation contractors, pool installers and new-build sites. Also the free sections of the classified listings, where clean fill wanted and clean fill available are both standing categories.
You will still pay for haulage, and that is the honest catch. Free dirt twenty miles away costs more than bought dirt from two miles away, because the truck is the expensive part either way. Ask how far before you ask how much.
Two things to check before accepting any of it. Whether it has been screened, and whether the site can tell you where it came from. Contaminated fill is a genuine liability, and it becomes yours the moment it is on your property.
Fill dirt cost questions
How much is a yard of fill dirt?
$8 to $15 a cubic yard for common fill, and $12 to $25 for clean screened fill. That is the dirt alone. Delivery is charged separately and on a small order it costs more than the dirt does.
How much is a dump truck load of fill dirt?
A 12 yard load runs about $138 in material plus $50 to $150 to bring it, so $188 to $288 delivered. Trucks carry 10 to 16 yards, so ask what size theirs is before comparing quotes.
Why is fill dirt cheaper than topsoil?
Because nothing was done to it. Topsoil is screened, sometimes blended with compost, and it has to grow things. Fill dirt is subsoil dug out of a hole somewhere, and the yard selling it was paid to take it away.
Can you get fill dirt for free?
Often, yes. Excavation and pool jobs pay to dispose of the dirt they dig out, so giving it to you saves them money. You pay only for hauling, and sometimes not even that if the site is close.
How much does clean fill dirt cost?
$12 to $25 a yard, roughly 61% above common fill. You are paying for screening: no rubble, no roots, no rock, which is what a permit or an inspector will want to see.
How much fill dirt do I need for a truckload?
Work the other way round. Measure the hole, add the settlement allowance, then see how many loads that is at 12 yards each. Ordering by the load rather than by the volume is how people end up with a pile they have to move twice.