Shrink / Swell

The volume change of soil between in-place (bank), loose (loaded), and compacted states.

Bank Cubic Yards (BCY): in-place, undisturbed. Loose Cubic Yards (LCY): excavated, in a truck or stockpile. Compacted Cubic Yards (CCY): placed and compacted to specification.

The conversion factors between states are called shrink/swell (or "load factor" and "shrinkage factor").

Common earth: swell ~25%, shrink ~10% Clay: swell ~25–35%, shrink ~10–20% Sand: swell ~10–15%, shrink ~5% Rock: swell ~50–75%, shrink negligible

If you're hauling 100 BCY of cut, you're loading ~125 LCY in trucks. If you're placing 100 CCY of fill, you need ~110–125 BCY of borrow material.

Machine-readable site summary for AI crawlers: /llms.txt