Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living What's your gravel?

The county just put this year's new gravel on our road. yellow sand, and rock is used here. Where lime rock is cheap, they use that.

What is the gravel use in your neck of the woods?

White limestone. A pit 2 miles from my farm. Can buy different sizes from 3 inch down to lime.

Doctor Dan, What do you pay for the rock?

Years ago, I was at an Angus breeders farm in Southern , Iowa, he had a nice lime rock yard, I passed a lime quarry on the road to his place .

Decomposed granite. Eroded from Pikes Peak. What is this about "this years gravel on the county road"? We are lucky if we see new gravel every 20 years.

Years ago in coal mining country, we had what was referred to as Red Dog.It was the burned up slate piles and that had some coal mixed in with it .These big piles would catch fire and smoulder for years.Once they burned themselves out, the remains made good road gravel if you could call it that.

Crushed limestone.
Big quarry just down the road, trucks running past the house 24/7 now,
Trying to make up for the covid shutdowns.

They sell everything from dust through shotrock.
Concrete and blacktop plants, and make lime.


Slate is common also. Just dug out of someone's slate bank.
Some turns to mud as it breaks down.
One guy digs some that comes looking like saucers to meatplatters.
We used it in the woods to build roads. Great stuff, looked a bit like limestone,
But it came out of the ground in those shapes. As it broke up, it compacted and
stiffened up the dirt underneath.

Crushed rock or volcanic cinders depending on the location.

Typically going to find Crushed limestone in much of Tennessee.

Limestone here, as this is limestone country, with a number of rock quarries. However, a lot of the roads in the counties to my west use river gravel, as they're in the vicinity of the Mississippi, Ohio, Tennessee, and Cumberland rivers.

We used to get washed gravel from streambeds. Not sure where it was hauled from. Now it is crushed rock from Granite Mountain, in Little Rock. Or from a quarry in Cabot, Arkansas. There is a place called Gravel Ridge near here, but never saw any gravel from there. miles

Washed rock.

Comes from old stream bed quarry, is screened for different sizes.

I put it on top of base material, and it makes an all surface road, not much different than asphalt.

Expensive. But not near as expensive as hot mix.

It gonna be different everywhere you go.

Around here everyone calls it "Bluestone". It's actually a hard limestone that's dark blue or black. We pay about $18 per ton delivered to the stone yard by the full dump truck load. We sell it for $30 per ton. We stock it in Dust, Crusher Run, and 3/4". We have a crushed stone plant right across the street, but they won't let small trucks in there. We have a couple of other plants within a 10 mile radius.

We have another store about 30 miles away closer to DC. Down there they produce a "Bluestone" that's actually a serpentine. The Dust and Crusher Run tends to be real mushy when it's wet, so we sell the stuff from up here.

Down on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the ground yields sand and washed gravel that's rounded and it's quartz. This is where we get our washed gravel and sand from. If you used it on a road or driveway, it would be like driving on marbles. Typically when they build roads down there, they haul bluestone from up here on down there. Then the trucking companies back haul sand or gravel back up or vise versa. We sell Masonry Sand and Concrete Sand for $50 per ton. Cost on sand is about $35 delivered. Pea Gravel and 3/4" for $55 per ton. Cost on that is about $40. The 2" comes from further North and it's $75. 2" cost is about $50. It's all about trucking. The further away it originates, the more the cost.

We sell Mexican Beach Pebbles for $875.00 per ton in 40 lbs. bags. Believe it or not, right now I can't keep it in stock.

I can't find a picture, in NW Ontario a lot of driveways use reject rail ballast The call it granite, but I think it is basalt rock, black colored, volcanic rock.

In AZ it is mostly decomposed granite. Once the road bed is thick enough it will wear better then concrete.

The new gravel

Oops I forgot creek gravel . . .brown chert.

That looks loose and very prone to dust, mud, and high maintenance.

I'd get the county commissioner out there to discuss that... And after it does what I described above, I'd get him out there again to discuss it again.

It is, they mix some clay in to make it pack better. Some people spend hundreds for an oil spray to hold dust down in front of their house.

The decomposed granite used here has a certain percentage of clay in it as binder. put down right and rolled when damp,it is close to cement except when the next stupid grader operator scarps it up and regrades it.Then it is all dust. We call for a water truck and the county tells us they depend on mother nature to wet it down.
That dust abatement spray they use,turns that clay into a slick surface and it is hell on dogs feet, can't get if your shoes and forms a slime on your truck.

Our county maintenance screws up more than they fix .

The gravel on the roads of the Township I live in are made up of gray limestone, dolomite and a small part of St. Peter sandstone.

Along the lines of county roads, I've been a township trustee snice 82. My father was a trustee before me. The county graded one mile of road in each township back then. I doubt if they grade any ever now.

When they do, they are so wide, fifty years ago they were 120' fence, to fence.

In southern Arizona, it's just plain dirt, Ive never seen gravel laid down for road bed unless it's a private road. Our dirt roads get slick and mucky when it rains, dry and dusty when hot and dry........and always washboard, unless the county grader has passed thru, which ain't often.

That's pretty much the case in NM as well.

They do get some gravel out of old stream beds that may happen to cross the dirt roads though. But then you get the large rocks with the small. I've seen some exposed by the grader you damn sure didn't want to hit.

Richard, I miss the yellow sand and rock of home. Down here, it is broken lime rock. Once when I had a flat tire, there was a piece of the rock about the size of a person's finger inside the tire. The hole that it created allowed for very rapid loss of air.

Cinders, red or black, depending which pit is cheapest that year. I kinda favor the red.

They don’t hold up all that well, but five side dump semi loads is $800 delivered, so we always have a few piles around. The glacial clay on the farm soaks it all up.

That's a heck of a lot cheaper than the +/- $500 I paid for a set of transfer dumps here (including the $120 for mileage and driver from the pit)

Lots of crushed concrete down here.

Just had two tri axle loads of crusher run spread out on our driveway. It was $350 per load.

Washed rock. Put on top of base material.

I wish I could get it that cheap.

Cinders are cheap because they are light and I have three pits within 12 miles of the farm, so there's competition and not much trucking expense. Compared to washed rock, however, it's pretty marginal stuff. It kinda turns into dust and disappears. But, hey, it's cheap enough to get a whole bunch of it, so it evens out.

Crushed basalt.

Cool Steve, Reject rail ballest is popular around NW Ontario.

Whole area is covered in it courtesy of the Columbia Flood Basalts.