Mate's Rates: Free Delivery on Full 8m³ Loads

From today, a full load rides free. Order 8m³ of a single product and the delivery on it costs you nothing — in any of our three zones, on any delivery day. Order 16m³ of one product and that one's free too. It's the sharpest rate we've put on freight, and it's live on the site now.

The Rule in One Line

8m³ of one product is a full truck, and a full truck goes out free. So does a second one — 16m³ of the same product is two full loads and neither is charged.

There's no code to enter, nothing to claim and no minimum spend beyond the quantity itself. Put 8m³ of screened topsoil in the cart, enter your postcode, and the delivery line comes back at $0.00.

It Counts Per Product, Not Per Order

This is the part worth reading twice, because it's the part that decides what you pay.

Our trucks carry one material per load. Soil and mulch never share a tray — the load is tipped, not stacked — which is why delivery here has always been charged per truck load rather than per order. The new rate works the same way: it applies to each product line on its own, not to your cart total.

So 8m³ of mulch and 8m³ of garden soil is two full trucks, and both go free. But 8m³ of soil and 3m³ of pebbles is one full truck and one part load — the soil rides free, the pebbles are charged at your zone rate.

What's in the cart	What happens
8m³ screened topsoil	Free
8m³ topsoil + 8m³ pine bark mulch	Two full loads, both free
16m³ crushed rock	Two full loads, both free
8m³ topsoil + 3m³ pebbles	Topsoil free, pebbles at your zone rate
5m³ mulch	Part load, charged at your zone rate

What Each Quantity Costs

Quantity of one product	Delivery on that product
1 – 7m³	Standard zone rate
8m³	Free
9 – 15m³	Standard zone rate
16m³	Free
More than 16m³	Standard zone rate

Zone rates themselves haven't moved — $70, $80 or $95 depending on where you are. Check which one is yours on the Delivery areas page, or read Where We Deliver for the zones in full.

Round Down to 8, or Up to 16

Because the free rate lands on the full-truck numbers rather than across a range, the quantities either side of them are where people quietly lose money.

Nine metres of mulch is a full truck plus one metre — which is two trucks, which is two lots of freight. Eight metres is one truck and free. If you're hovering around 9 or 10, the honest advice is to take 8 and get on with it.

It's starker at the top end. Twelve cubic metres is two loads at the full rate; sixteen is two loads at nothing. That's four extra metres of material and $140 less freight in Zone 1. If the job can absorb the extra and you've somewhere to put it, it's a straightforward win.

What we won't tell you is to buy 8 metres when you need 3. Eight cubic metres is a serious pile — enough mulch to cover around 105 square metres of garden bed — and material you don't use isn't a saving, it's a heap you have to shift twice.

What 8m³ Actually Covers

Spread at	8m³ covers about	Typical job
30mm	265m²	Bedding sand under pavers
50mm	160m²	Decorative pebble, topdressing
75mm	105m²	Mulch over beds, compacted toppings
100mm	80m²	Turf preparation, driveway base
150mm	53m²	Deep mulch, trench backfill
300mm	26m²	Building a new garden bed

In practice, on a standard suburban block, a full load tends to line up with a whole job rather than a corner of one:

• Soils — 8m³ preps roughly 80m² of lawn at 100mm, or fills about 26m² of new raised bed at 300mm. Front and back lawn in one drop on most blocks.
• Mulch — at the usual 75mm, a full load covers around 105m² of garden bed, which is most people's entire garden done in an afternoon.
• Toppings — crushed granite paths and driveways at 75mm compacted. Order a touch over what the calculator says, because it settles as it compacts.
• Aggregates — a 100mm driveway or shed base over about 80m², or drainage backfill around ag line.
• Sands — bedding sand under pavers goes a long way at 30mm; brickies and washed sand for mortar and concreting.
• Pebbles — 50mm over beds, around pools and through dry creek beds, covering around 160m².

The volume calculator on every product page works this out for you — put in length, width and depth and it writes the quantity straight into the box, wastage buffer included. If it lands you at 7.2m³, round it up to 8 and the freight comes off.

If you'd like the longer explanation of how loads are counted, How Many Cubic Metres Do You Actually Need Delivered? goes through it properly.

Cement Still Rides Along

Cement is the one product that isn't sold by the load, and it hasn't changed. It comes in 20kg bags and it rides free on a delivery that's already running for another material — including a delivery that's free because it's a full load. Bags on top of a full truck of blue metal cost you nothing extra to get there.

Cement ordered on its own still pays its own delivery.

Where and When It Applies

All three zones, every delivery day, weekends included. There's no weekend surcharge and never has been, so a free Sunday load is free exactly the way a Tuesday one is — see Now Delivering Sundays for how weekend runs work.

Nothing else about ordering changes. Order before 3pm and the earliest date we can offer is the next day; after 3pm it's generally two days out. Weekdays give you a morning, an afternoon or an anytime window, and Saturday and Sunday run as a single trip. Victorian public holidays are crossed out in the calendar rather than hidden, so you can see what's on before you commit.

As always, the date you pick is a request until we confirm it, and we confirm before dispatch.

Before You Order

Check your zone and rate on the Delivery areas page, work out your quantity with the calculator on any product page, and browse the range in the Catalog. The full terms sit on our Delivery page.

Not sure whether your job is an 8 or a 16, or whether the truck can reach where you want the pile? Call the yard on 1300 21 21 11 or use the Contact page. We'd far rather sort it out with you before the truck is loaded than after it's tipped.