Class 5, Sand and Gravel Delivery in Clay County, MN

Minnesota Rock Supply delivers gravel, stone and aggregate in Clay County, MN, and the ground here decides how a base is built. This is the flat bed of glacial Lake Agassiz, deep silt and clay that settled in still water and holds what falls on it.

Class 5 is the Minnesota base course. On clay, the base carries the load and the drainage has to be handled separately.

Materials delivered in Clay County

Start with the job. A driveway, a patio and a drain each want a different material, and the local names below are the ones to order by.

Class 5 does the heavy lifting on most ground in this county.

Under a slab or around a footing drain, the clean washed rock matters more than the base. 3/4 Clear Rock is also sold as foundation rock or radon rock, and it is the gas-permeable layer beneath the passive radon system Minnesota requires in new homes.

For a patio, bedding comes first. Granite fines, also called screenings or stone screenings, bed pavers and flagstone, and Mason Sand works for brick and block and for paver joints.

A walkway that needs a finer, walkable surface takes Walkway Gravel.

Where the ground stays wet, drainage rock is the material, not a base course. A 1 1/2 inch clear rock carries water away from a footing, a drywell or a downspout run, and it does that job because the fines are gone.

Ground conditions across Clay County

Across the Red River Valley and the northern lake plain, the soil is the flat bed of glacial Lake Agassiz. Deep silt and clay settled out in still water, and sandy beach ridges mark the old shorelines.

That clay is weak, frost susceptible and a poor aggregate source. Usable sand and gravel sit in the beach ridges and river terraces, which is why the base material arrives by truck rather than coming out of the ground under the drive.

The water problem follows the soil. There is almost no fall across the lake plain and a tight clay or peat subgrade underneath, so meltwater and rain sit where they land.

An under-built base on that ground moves. Class 5 spread over soft clay without a drainage path will pump and rut through a spring thaw, so the base and the drainage get planned together.

Erosion shows up on two fronts. Cutbank scour and bank slumping run along the Red and its tributaries during the spring rise, and wind moves bare, flat, unsheltered field soil.

Riprap armours a shoreline, a streambank, a culvert outlet or a slope against ice, wave and spring runoff.

Timing is tight. Base, drive and paver work waits for the thaw and for the clay to dry out, and spring load limits go up on North zone roads from late March into May.

Frost drives deep into clay that holds water and heaves hard as it thaws. The Minnesota Residential Code footing table sets 5 feet (60 inches) for its Zone I counties, which is the depth a footing is set to here.

Delivery across Clay County

Order online and pick the quantity. Bulk material is sold by the ton or by the yard, and each product page has a calculator to size the load.

Choose a delivery date at checkout, and a dump truck tips the load on site in one pile. Delivery covers Moorhead, Dilworth, Barnesville, Hawley, Glyndon, Sabin, Ulen, Hitterdal, Felton and Georgetown.

Clay ground and a wet spring change how a site takes a truck, so plan where the pile lands before the thaw. Fill dirt, also called common borrow, goes down first where grade has to come up before a Class 5 course.

Choosing the right material

Otter Tail County and Becker County sit in West Central Minnesota on different ground. Both are moraine and outwash country, with sandy loam over gravel around the lakes and broad outwash sand plains.

That ground is more dependable sand and gravel than the lake clay here, so a base there can sit on native material. In Clay County the base has to be hauled in and the drainage planned with it.

Norman County shares this ground region, the same flat bed of glacial Lake Agassiz with its beach ridges and river terraces. The same base and drainage reasoning applies there.

On this ground, match the material to the job. Class 5 for a drive, a pad or a road base.

Class 2, sold as driveway gravel, for drive surfacing and paver base.

Clear rock for anything that has to drain, and black dirt screened or pulverized for lawns and beds. Fill dirt for bulk fill and raising grade before the base goes down.

Order Class 5 and aggregate in Clay County

Class 5 is the base course this county builds on, and it is the material to start with for a drive, a pad or a road base. Minnesota Rock Supply delivers gravel, stone, sand and soil across Clay County.