How much does a gravel driveway cost in Louisiana?
Plan on about $4 to $10 per square foot for a gravel driveway, materials and labor together. For a drive 100 feet long and 10 feet wide, that works out to roughly $4,000 to $10,000. Those are the figures a national home-services cost guide publishes for 2026.
A second national guide runs lower. It puts most gravel driveway jobs at $500 to $3,500, with an average near $1,800. Its per square foot range is $1 to $10. The gap is real. The low end is fresh rock on a drive that already has a solid base. The high end is a new drive built from the dirt up.
What does a gravel driveway cost by size?
Size moves the number more than anything else. Length times width gives you square feet, and the rock follows from there. Here is what one national cost guide publishes by driveway size, with labor in the number.
| Driveway size | Published total range |
|---|---|
| 500 square feet (about 10 by 50 feet) | $2,000 to $5,000 |
| 800 square feet | $3,200 to $8,000 |
| 1,000 square feet (about 10 by 100 feet) | $4,000 to $10,000 |
| 1,500 square feet | $6,000 to $15,000 |
| 2,000 square feet (a long rural drive) | $8,000 to $20,000 |
Rural drives around here run past the end of that table fast. A 1,000-foot drive 12 feet wide is 12,000 square feet. At the same $4 to $10 per square foot, the arithmetic lands between $48,000 and $120,000. A camp road and a town driveway are not the same job. That is why a gravel driveway in northeast Louisiana gets priced off the site.
How much does the rock itself cost per ton?
The rock is usually the smaller half of the bill. One guide puts labor at about half the total. Bulk stone prices from national guides look like this.
| Material | Market price per ton |
|---|---|
| Crusher run (graded base rock) | $25 to $50 |
| Crushed limestone | $30 to $40 |
| Crushed stone | $30 to $60 |
| Crushed concrete | $11 to $53 |
| Pea gravel | $50 to $100 |
| River rock | $60 to $150 |
The U.S. Geological Survey puts the average 2025 value of crushed stone at $18.50 per metric ton at the plant. Your delivered price sits well above that, because the haul gets added on top. Some guides fold delivery into those rows. Others list it at $10 to $25 per ton on top. Rock hauled in by the load gets cheaper per ton as the order grows.
How do you figure the tons for your driveway?
Depth is where a lot of the money goes. National guides put the minimum at 5 to 6 inches, laid in layers. A drive that carries loaded trucks wants 8 to 12 inches. Once you pick a depth, four steps get you the tonnage.
- Length in feet times width in feet equals square feet.
- Depth in inches divided by 12 equals depth in feet.
- Square feet times depth in feet equals cubic feet.
- Cubic feet divided by 27 equals cubic yards, and cubic yards times 1.4 equals tons.
Here is a worked example. A drive 100 feet long and 12 feet wide is 1,200 square feet. At 6 inches deep, that is 0.5 feet. So 1,200 times 0.5 is 600 cubic feet. Divide by 27 and you get 22.2 cubic yards. Times 1.4, that is about 31 tons.
Then order 10 to 15 percent extra for compaction and spillage. Call it 34 to 36 tons for that drive. A second guide gets to the same place another way: 2.5 tons covers 100 square feet at 6 inches deep.
Which rock belongs on a drive here?
Crushed limestone graded coarse down to fines is the workhorse. The fines pack in between the stone and lock the surface together. Louisiana’s own highway spec grades a surface course the same way. It starts at 100 percent passing a 1.5 inch sieve. At the fine end, 3 to 15 percent passes a number 200 sieve.
Washed gravel is rounder and rolls under a tire, so it suits a parking pad better than a drive. Sand-clay-gravel is a real Louisiana surface course material, written into that same state spec. Crushed concrete sits at the low end of the tables above when you can source it.
One note on rock names. Numbers like 610 and 57 are supplier gradation designations. They are not Louisiana DOTD terms. If a yard quotes you a number, ask what the gradation is.
Why does a Louisiana driveway need more under it?
Two local things take rock money that a drive up north would not need. The first is rain. NOAA’s 1991 to 2020 normals put Bastrop at 58.39 inches a year, with April the wettest month at 6.14 inches.
The second is the ground. Perry clay is the biggest soil in Morehouse Parish, and the NRCS classes it poorly drained. It runs about 60 percent clay at the surface. Water will not go down through that, so it has to run off the top.
The natural levee soils around Bastrop hold a seasonal high water table. The NRCS puts it 1.5 to 3.0 feet down, December through April. Rock laid on soft ground over that winter table sinks, and the drive ruts. So a drive here gets a crown and a real base. Fabric goes down where the ground stays soft. Sloping the ground beside the drive is land grading. One guide prices grading at $1 to $3 per square foot.
Is a gravel driveway cheaper than concrete?
Up front, yes, in most cases. National guides put a concrete driveway at $6 to $15 per square foot. A two-car concrete drive runs $2,400 to $8,600. The same guide has gravel at $4 to $10 per square foot. The gap widens as the drive gets longer.
Gravel takes that saving back in upkeep. One guide budgets $100 to $400 a year for regrading and fresh rock. It puts the life of a gravel drive at 10 to 20 years.
What does it cost to fix a washed-out drive?
Less than building new, when the base under the rock held. National guides put gravel driveway repair at $0.25 to $2.20 per square foot. A typical repair bill lands at $50 to $450. Resurfacing with a 3 inch layer runs $0.25 to $0.75 per square foot.
That is the easy case. When a drive pumps mud under a loaded truck, the base is gone. The soft ground has to come out, and the job prices closer to new work. The same guides put a full replacement at $1,500 to $6,000.
One more line item sits at the road, and the road owner sets it. LA DOTD issues an access connection permit on a state highway. That permit sets the culvert size, length, material and driveway width. On a parish road the parish handles it. Ouachita Parish publishes a $250 fee for a new or replacement driveway culvert. The parish then surveys the spot and sets the pipe size.
Getting a real number for your own drive
Every range on this page comes from national cost guides and public data. None of it is a quote. The price on your drive comes off the length, the width, the depth of rock and what sits underneath.
We look at the site first, and the estimate is free. Call (318) 614-2073 and tell us how long the drive runs and where it is. The page on how we build and rebuild gravel drives covers the base and the crown.