Gravel Delivery for New Hampshire Ledge, Frost and Camp Roads

Work here fits between two dates nobody prints on a calendar. Frost has to come out of the ground and mud season has to finish before a compactor is worth starting, and then it runs until the ground freezes again. Gravel delivery inside that window builds a road. A load dropped on thawing ground in April sinks into it.

So the questions on this site come in a set order. What goes down, in what order, and how deep.

Base or surface, and why a camp road wants both

A drive or camp road is two layers doing two different jobs.

Underneath goes the base. Crushed gravel is one inch minus, a graded mix of stone, gravel and binding fines, written on a local plan sheet as NHDOT Item 304.3. That item number is how material gets specified around here, not a certificate anyone holds. Where a finer, tighter pack is wanted, crusher run does the same work at 3/4 inch minus.

On top goes the wearing course. Driveway gravel on a drive, walkway gravel on a path. That layer takes the tires and the plow blade, and it gets topped up every few years.

Frost reaches about 48 inches in the southern towns and 60 or more up north. Nothing you spread is going below that, so neither layer stops a heave. What they do is keep water out of the wheel track, so the road lifts evenly in the thaw instead of opening holes.

Clean stone or stone with fines in it

The second decision, and the one that gets reversed most often.

Stone with fines packs. Stone without fines drains. Decide which of those you want and the material picks itself.

• Packing: crushed gravel, crusher run, and stone dust as the setting bed under flatwork.
• Draining: 3/4 inch crushed stone, #57 stone, and drain rock in a trench or along a foundation.

Stone dust in a French drain silts up by the second spring. Clean #57 under a shed pad rolls under your boots for as long as you own the shed.

Loam, fill and garden soil are three separate orders

Topsoil is loam in this state and it is bought screened. Screened loam is the top four to six inches under seed or sod and nothing deeper. Raising a grade or filling a hole is a job for fill dirt, with loam capping it at the end. Raised beds and planting holes take garden soil, which is blended and lighter than either.

Ordering loam for the full depth of a low spot is the commonest way to over-order on this site.

The ground this catalogue was built around

Stony glacial till with granite ledge close to grade over much of the state, sand and gravel outwash along the Merrimack and the Souhegan, lakeshore banks that lose ground at high water, and streams that scour after a thaw or a heavy rain.

The job	Where to start
Drives, camp roads, shed and equipment pads	Crushed gravel, crusher run, driveway gravel
Trenches, drywells, downspout and foundation runs	#57 stone, #67 stone, drain rock
Patios, walks and step landings	Stone dust, mason sand, pea stone
Lawns, beds and finish grading	Screened loam, garden soil, shredded mulch
Banks, culvert outlets and shorelines	RipRap, large river rock

Twenty-four materials in all, each one listed with its size, grading and type. The whole list sits on the materials page.

Gravel delivery, and what your ZIP code settles

Get the tons first. The calculators take a rectangle, a circle or up to five separate areas, a depth in inches, and the material you have chosen, then return cubic yards, tons and cubic feet.

Then open the product page, set the quantity and pick a delivery date. Delivery is arranged at checkout from the ZIP code you enter, and the delivery page covers what the truck needs at your end, which on a camp road is usually the limiting factor rather than the tonnage.

If two materials look interchangeable on screen and you would rather not guess, send the measurements to New Hampshire Rock Supply from the contact page first. Shorter conversation than a second load. The ordering questions page goes over the ground most buyers cover next, and what this storefront actually is explains how an order becomes a load.