Craft Quantities
Plan & Takeoffs

Cross-market term

Ton / tonne

A unit of mass used for bulk materials — aggregate, asphalt, soil, steel. Three different quantities share the word, and which one is meant depends on the market and sometimes on the trade.
  • 4Markets
  • NoSame thing everywhere
  • 4Calculators

What it is called, by market

One concept, four markets. Where a name means something else locally, the card says so rather than leaving you to find out on site.

  • United Statesyours

    Same word, different thing

    ton

    also short ton, net ton

    An unqualified American ton is the SHORT ton — 2,000 pounds — and it is the lightest of the three.

  • Canada

    Same word, different thing

    tonne

    also metric ton, ton

    Canada is metric, so "tonne" is the metric tonne — but American suppliers and older documents still use short tons, so the word alone is not sufficient.

  • United Kingdom

    Same word, different thing

    tonne

    also metric tonne, long ton

    Modern British practice is the metric tonne — 1,000 kilograms. The historic imperial "long ton" of 2,240 pounds survives in older documents and in some shipping contexts.

  • Australia

    Same thing

    tonne

    also metric tonne

    Australia is metric throughout; the tonne is unambiguous there.

The governing standard, by market

  • International

    SI

    The tonne is accepted for use with SI as 1,000 kilograms exactly.

Calculators for this

Each works in either measurement system, and the terminology on the page follows whichever market you have selected.

Short Tons to Metric Tonnes Calculator →Metric Tonnes to Short Tons Calculator →Asphalt Tons to Cubic Yards Calculator →Refrigeration Tons, BTU/h and kW Converter →

Frequently asked questions

How different are a ton and a tonne?
Enough to matter on any delivery, and the three values sit close enough together to look like rounding. The American short ton is 2,000 pounds. The metric tonne is 1,000 kilograms, which is about ten per cent heavier than a short ton. The historic British long ton is 2,240 pounds, heavier again, and it is the one most likely to appear without warning in an older specification. A quantity quoted as "tons" and supplied as tonnes is under-ordered by roughly a tenth; the reverse over-orders by the same. On a bulk material priced by mass, that is a real error in both the quantity and the invoice, and it is invisible in the arithmetic because the number itself was right.
Why is a ton of refrigeration not a mass at all?
Because it is a rate of cooling that happens to be named after one. A ton of refrigeration is defined from the heat required to melt a ton of ice in a day, which is how the unit got its name in the era of ice-based cooling, and it has been a power unit ever since. So an air conditioner described as a three-ton unit weighs nothing like three tons and is being described by its cooling capacity. The two senses share a word and an origin, but one is a rate of heat flow and the other a mass, and they appear in adjacent trades on the same job — which is why HVAC documents normally say "tons" for capacity while the same site's aggregate deliveries are in tons of mass.
Why are bulk materials sold by mass rather than volume?
Because mass is what a weighbridge can verify and volume is not. A lorry-load of aggregate or asphalt can be weighed exactly, while its volume depends on how it is heaped, how it has settled and how much moisture it carries — so the ticket is written in mass and the site converts to the volume it needs. That conversion is where the density comes in, and density varies with the material, its grading and its moisture content, which is why cubic-yards-to-tons conversions are material-specific rather than generic. It is also why an order placed in volume and delivered in mass needs the density stated somewhere, or the two parties are agreeing on different quantities.