Concrete is dense. Normal-weight concrete runs about 145 to 150 pounds per cubic foot — call it 150 for estimating. Asphalt is close behind at roughly 145. Those two numbers, plus a tape measure, are enough to estimate almost any tear-out before you rent a trailer or book a haul.
The slab shortcuts
Because most residential concrete is a slab of known thickness, it is easier to think in pounds per square foot:
- 4-inch slab (most patios, walkways, and residential driveways): about 50 pounds per square foot.
- 5-inch slab: about 62 pounds per square foot.
- 6-inch slab (heavier driveways, garage floors, some commercial): about 75 pounds per square foot.
- 3-inch asphalt (a typical residential asphalt driveway): about 36 pounds per square foot.
So a 10 × 12 patio at four inches is 120 square feet × 50 = 6,000 pounds, or three tons. A 20 × 40 two-car driveway at four inches is 800 × 50 = 40,000 pounds — twenty tons. A 12 × 50 asphalt driveway at three inches is 600 × 36 = about 21,600 pounds, nearly eleven tons.
Why the pile looks bigger than the math
Broken concrete takes up far more room than the slab it came from, because the pieces do not stack neatly and there is air between them. A loose pile of rubble typically weighs somewhere around a ton to a ton and a half per cubic yard, depending on piece size. That matters when you are sizing a container or trailer by volume: the patio above is three tons, but it will fill two to three cubic yards of trailer.
Matching the load to the vehicle
- Half-ton pickup: despite the name, payload is often around 1,500 to 2,000 pounds. That is 30 to 40 square feet of four-inch slab — a small walkway, not a patio.
- Three-quarter-ton or one-ton pickup: roughly 2,500 to 4,000 pounds of payload. A small patio in one trip, if the truck is rated for it and nothing else is in the bed.
- Rented dump trailer: commonly rated for 7,000 to 10,000 pounds. Three to five tons per trip, which covers most patios and splits a driveway into several trips.
- Hauling service: a container or a commercial truck sized to the job, and someone else worrying about the axle weights.
The number that matters is the payload rating on the door-jamb sticker, not what the truck looks like it can handle. An overloaded trailer is a safety problem on the freeway and a ticket at the scale.
A quick worksheet
- 1Measure the slab: length × width in feet = square feet.
- 2Multiply by the pounds-per-square-foot figure for its thickness.
- 3Divide by 2,000 for tons.
- 4Divide tons by your vehicle’s payload (in tons) to get the number of trips.
- 5Round up. Then decide whether those trips are worth your Saturday or whether a container makes more sense.
