The Phoenix Contractor’s Guide to Aggregate Delivery

Section 1

Picking the right material for the job.

Most material callouts in Phoenix plan sets are specified by size and type, but the spec sheet doesn’t always tell you how the rock was processed — and processing is what determines whether it compacts, drains, or just looks good. A quarter-inch minus, a quarter-inch screened, and a quarter-inch washed all come from the same crusher, and they all look like similar rock on the pile. In the ground, they behave like three completely different materials.

The quick mental model: minus material contains the fines (crushed dust and sand-sized particles), which means it compacts hard but doesn’t drain. Screened material has the fines shaken out, so it drains but stays loose. Washed material has been rinsed, so it’s clean enough for exposed concrete, pool decks, or anywhere color matters — but it’s the most expensive and the least compactable of the three.

If your submittal calls for “quarter minus” and you order quarter screened, your base will fail compaction. If it calls for washed and you order screened, your concrete finish will come out dusty and dull. Read the spec carefully, and when in doubt, call dispatch before the truck rolls — every quarry in the Valley labels this stuff slightly differently and the wrong pile at the wrong yard is a rejected load.

Section 2

Base vs. drainage: the most common miss.

The single most common mistake we see on contractor orders — especially from crews new to the Valley — is using the wrong product family for the wrong job. A base course under pavers, under concrete, or under artificial turf needs fines to lock the surface together and create a hard pan. A drainage layer — French drains, dry creek beds, pipe bedding, around-the-house infiltration — needs fines removed so water has a path.

Under pavers, the Phoenix standard is generally a compacted 4 to 6 inches of ABC road base or quarter minus, finished with a half-inch to one-inch bedding layer of concrete sand or torpedo sand. Under a concrete slab, crews typically spec two to four inches of quarter minus compacted to 95 percent, depending on the inspector and the soil. Under artificial turf, two inches of quarter minus compacted firm is the sweet spot for drainage that still holds shape.

For drainage — French drain trenches, dry creek beds, or tight-around-pipe bedding — switch to a screened or washed product. Three-quarter screened is common for surface drainage applications, and quarter washed or pea gravel is common for decorative and around-the-plant applications. The MAG Section 200-A pipe bedding spec calls for washed material; screened won’t always pass inspection on a municipal job.

Section 3

How much do you need? Load sizing in tons.

Aggregate in the Valley is sold by the ton, not the cubic yard. That catches a lot of crews coming from other trades or other markets. The conversion is roughly 1.4 tons per cubic yard for most crushed rock and base product, and closer to 1.5 tons per cubic yard for washed aggregate — the extra water weight matters. When in doubt, call your quarry or use the calculator on our site to convert square footage and depth into a ton count.

Our trucks run up to seventeen tons per full load. That’s roughly twelve cubic yards of material — enough to cover about 800 square feet of 4-inch base, 550 square feet of 6-inch base, or a driveway pad plus backfill on a typical production home. If you need more than 17 tons, we’ll split the order into multiple loads, and we’ll dispatch them sequentially or on separate days depending on what your job site can stage.

Partial loads are available down to one ton, but per-ton haul cost goes up as the load size drops — the truck still has to make the round trip whether it’s carrying five tons or seventeen. If you have a small order and a big project coming, we can often bundle the small delivery into a regular run to the same area, which is where the volume tier pricing starts to pay.

Section 4

How quarry routing drives your haul cost.

Metro Phoenix has aggregate sources in North Phoenix, Peoria, the Salt River Pima-Maricopa area, and south out toward the Superstitions. Each quarry carries a slightly different product mix, and each one is a different distance from your job site. Haul cost in our pricing is calculated by the actual mile from the closest approved source to your address — not a flat fee, not a zone, not a round number.

That means two things for how you should think about a job. First, the closer you are to a quarry, the cheaper your delivery line. If your project sits in North Phoenix, Scottsdale, Glendale, Peoria, or New River, you’re hauling short from our primary Phoenix-based sources and your delivery will be among the lowest-cost in the Valley. Second, not every quarry carries every product, so sometimes the closest source for quarter minus isn’t the closest source for pea gravel — our dispatch handles that routing behind the scenes, but it’s why you’ll occasionally see a different haul number on two loads going to the same address.

We publish zip-code-level coverage on our service areas page and city-by-city pages for Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Glendale that walk through the drive-time and routing considerations for each market.

Section 5

How pricing actually works in Phoenix.

We don’t publish “starting at” prices because they would be wrong for three out of four contractors the minute they were quoted. Material is priced per ton from the quarry, delivery is priced per mile from the closest approved source to the job site, and sales tax applies to material only — never to the haul charge. Every estimate we return shows those three lines separately, so you can build your bid without backing a hidden haul number out of a bundled quote.

The estimator on our homepage returns a full breakdown in about 30 seconds: address, tons, material, and the delivered number comes back itemized. Dispatch then confirms the number before a truck loads, which is why we hit 98-percent estimate accuracy. The 2 percent variance is almost always a quarry ticker price that shifted between when you got the estimate and when we dispatched — and we flag it before you commit, not at the scale.

For contractors running consistent volume, we run a tier-challenge pricing program that gives you better per-ton and per-mile economics once you hit monthly thresholds. Details at the tier pricing section below, or the full mechanics live on our pricing & delivery page.

Section 6

Site prep — the $250 failed-delivery trap.

A failed delivery happens when equipment arrives and can’t dump the load — locked gate, no overhead clearance, soft ground, a vehicle blocking the staging zone, no one on site to direct the driver. When that happens the truck leaves full, the load gets returned to the quarry, and a $250 failed-delivery fee gets added to the re-dispatch. This is the single most avoidable problem in the entire Phoenix aggregate ecosystem, and almost every instance of it comes down to three things the contractor missed.

First, access. Our belly-dump and end-dump trucks need a straight run of roughly 80 to 100 feet of firm ground to drop a load, a turnaround that doesn’t require backing through a narrow gate, and overhead clearance free of low-hanging power lines, mesquite limbs, or patio covers. If any of that is in doubt, send dispatch a photo before the day of delivery.

Second, clearance around the dump point. Crews sometimes park a skid steer, a concrete mixer, or a trailer right where the load needs to drop — then scramble when the truck arrives. Clear the zone the night before.

Third, someone on site who can direct the driver. Dispatch will always try to reach the site contact before the truck arrives, but if your cell is in a pit with no signal, the driver defaults to the plan sheet — and the plan sheet doesn’t always match what the site actually needs.

The full one-page checklist we email to site managers is at the delivery prep checklist. Run through it the night before a big drop. The $250 you save is the easiest margin you’ll ever protect.

Section 7

Seasonal timing — monsoon, heat, and inspection windows.

Metro Phoenix is one of the most aggregate-friendly climates in the country in terms of raw trucking — we almost never lose days to snow or ice. But the Valley has its own seasonal pressure points that affect both the availability of material and the behavior of the product in the ground. Three of them actually move the needle.

Monsoon — July through September.

Monsoon storms dump short, intense rain that can flood trenches, wash out a freshly-laid base course, or turn a staging pad into mud for 48 hours. If a big storm is rolling in, our dispatch will often recommend pushing a delivery by a day rather than risk dropping a load onto a site that’s about to flood. Watch the forecast and stage your orders with a one-day buffer in the middle of monsoon season.

Summer heat — June through September.

Concrete work, asphalt, and hot-weather compaction all have temperature ceilings, and in Phoenix you can blow through them by 9 AM in August. If your job is pour-day-dependent, order your base material for the morning before the pour and plan the pour itself for early morning. Quarter minus that’s been sitting on-site for a day or two in 115-degree heat won’t behave any differently, but a concrete truck and a finish crew definitely will.

Inspection windows and permit timing.

Most Valley cities run tight inspection slots — morning blocks, afternoon blocks, 48-hour notice windows. If your pour inspection is set for Thursday morning, your base delivery needs to be on the ground and compacted by Wednesday at the latest, ideally Tuesday. We can dispatch same-day in most of Phoenix, Scottsdale, and Glendale, but next-day is the sane default for inspection-tied jobs.

Section 8

Scheduling, dispatch, and the day of delivery.

The smoothest deliveries all share a rhythm. You request the estimate online, dispatch calls or texts to confirm the address and the product, the load is scheduled for a delivery window — typically a two- to four-hour morning or afternoon block — and the driver calls or texts you 20 to 30 minutes out with an ETA. Most jobs get a scheduled window same-day or next-day; tighter windows are available for an upcharge if you’re stacking trades and need material on the ground by a specific hour.

Dispatch’s voice line runs 6:30 AM to 3:30 PM Monday through Friday at (602) 730-0077. That’s the number to call for anything order-related — new estimates, reschedules, urgent site questions, inspection-driven changes. Text updates run through a separate SMS long code at (623) 400-3828. TCPA compliance is why those are split; the long code is specifically what carriers require for opt-in text delivery updates.

Saturday deliveries are available with a weekend surcharge; Sundays are case-by-case and require management approval. Deliveries more than 75 miles from the nearest approved quarry get a long-haul flag and a dispatch sign-off before they’re scheduled. If you’re running out to Wickenburg or Florence, call and we’ll confirm the quarry routing before you quote the bid.

Section 9

Volume tier pricing — earn it, keep it.

Our contractor tier program borrows directly from how the airlines handle frequent flyers. Instead of demanding a long-term contract up front, we set you up with a 60-day tier challenge at the pricing level that matches your target volume — you earn the tier by delivering the tonnage, and you keep it for as long as you maintain the pace. Fall short and the program resets you to the tier below with no penalty.

Silver is 50 tons per month — easy to hit for a single crew running regular base-course work. Gold is 150 tons per month — the sweet spot for multi-crew shops with an active GC pipeline. Platinum is 300 tons per month — high-volume earthwork and paving operations. Tier pricing is set when dispatch confirms your starting tier, and every tier includes priority scheduling, first call on preferred delivery windows, and a named dispatch contact who knows your accounts.

There’s no contract, no auto-renew, no credit minimum. The pricing flags automatically on every order once dispatch has you set up. If you want to get on the program, drop your info on the pricing & delivery page and dispatch will walk you through the starting tier.

Section 10

Frequently asked contractor questions.