3/8" Crushed Stone for Tennessee Drives, Drip Lines and Utility Trenches

A small chip does whatever the ground under it does. On the Highland Rim and around the Central Basin that ground is cherty clay over limestone, firm enough in September and soft for weeks at a stretch in March, and on the eastern ridges it can be four inches of soil sitting on rock. 3/8" crushed stone is a dressing and a bedding material, never a structure, so the first question on any of these jobs is what it is going on top of rather than how much of it to buy.

Approximately three eighths of an inch, angular, sold loose

The listing is a single size of about three eighths of an inch, crushed so the pieces have broken faces rather than the worn faces of a river stone. There is no grading number attached to it, which matters when a plan sheet calls for a numbered size.

Angular pieces at one size settle closely against each other under a plate and give an even surface, and they hold a grade far better than anything rounded because each piece leans on its neighbor instead of rolling off it. That is the whole character of the material: neat, small, and able to sit still.

How this chip differs from the drive and path listings

Three listings on this site sit close together and get ordered in place of one another, so it is worth naming the differences.

Driveway gravel is a graded three quarter inch mix with a spread of sizes in it, built to knit into a lane surface. Walkway gravel is the crushed chip already set up as a path surface, with the depth and the base guidance that go with a path. This listing is the chip on its own, ordered when it is going on top of something that already exists: a compacted drive that needs a fresh face, a trench around a utility line, a bed that wants a clean cover.

Where 3/8" crushed stone goes, and how deep

Karst ground, July downpours and chip that travels

Water is the thing that moves a small chip, and here it arrives fast. Thin soil over limestone in the Central Basin sheds a storm almost straight away, and on a hill lot that flow concentrates into whatever line it finds. A two inch dressing laid across that line will be in the ditch by August.

Two things keep it home. Give the chip a hard edge at the downhill side of anything it covers, and keep it off concentrated flow altogether. Where limestone lies close under the surface and sinkholes already take runoff underground, think about where the water ends up before you place stone, not after.

A garage drip line and a transition band behind a garden wall

Two hypothetical examples, worked as this site's calculator works: length by width by depth in inches, divided by 12, divided by 27. Chip in this family runs about 2,800 lb per cubic yard on the figures this site publishes, roughly 1.4 tons to the cubic yard.

A splash strip along a 22 foot garage wall with no gutter, 2 feet wide at 3 inches, is 44 square feet. 44 x 3 = 132, divided by 12 = 11 cubic feet, divided by 27 = 0.41 cubic yards, about 0.6 tons.

A transition band behind a 24 foot timber garden wall standing 3 feet high, 4 inches wide: 24 x 0.33 x 3 = 24 cubic feet, divided by 27 = 0.89 cubic yards, about 1.25 tons. That band sits between the clay and the coarse zone. The coarse zone itself is a separate order of Drain Rock, because a wall drain needs voids this chip does not have. Check your own measurements on the stone calculator.

The pond bank that eats a load of chip

The third job people ask about is the edge of a pond or a creek, and the honest answer is that this material disappears there. A rising water line floats the smallest pieces off and drops them in the pond, stock walking a bank push the rest into the mud, and the bank ends up bare with a silt plume in front of it.

Tennessee machined rip-rap is specified by class for exactly this reason. Armoring goes to RipRap, and a bank that wants to be looked at rather than engineered goes to Large River Rock.

Ordering a dressing load and picking where it lands

Dressing loads are small, so the quantity is usually less of a problem than the drop. Chip is easy to wheelbarrow and easy to rake, which means a load can land some distance from the work and still get moved in an afternoon, but it spills, so a tarp under the drop spot is worth the trouble.

Delivery is arranged at checkout by ZIP code and the truck needs clear access to somewhere it can tip, which the delivery notes cover. Measure the area, work the depth, then set a quantity and a date on this page. If the load has to go up a steep lane or through a gate, raise it on the contact page before booking.