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Weight Converter — Pounds, Kilograms, Short Tons and Metric Tons

A short ton is 2,000 lb, a long ton is 2,240 lb and a metric ton is 1,000 kg — about 2,205 lb. Three different weights share one word, and a delivery ticket rarely says which one it means. Enter a number, pick the two units and this converter gives you the answer plus every other unit at once, using the exact NIST factors. Below the calculator: which ton belongs to which trade, the five other units called a ton that are not weights at all, and what a legal truck can actually carry.

Type a decimal or a fraction — 1.5 and 1 1/2 both work.

Results are estimates for planning purposes. Verify with your supplier, engineer, or a qualified professional before ordering material or performing work.

Which ton is on your ticket?

Three units in American use are called a ton and they are not the same weight. The one you get depends on the industry, and sometimes on where the material was quoted.

NameExactlyIn poundsWhere you meet it
Short tonUS ton, net ton2,000 lb2,000Everything sold by the ton in the United States: aggregate, asphalt, ready-mix, structural steel, scrap, crane ratings.
Long tonimperial ton, gross ton2,240 lb2,240Iron ore and a few other bulk commodities, ship displacement, older British drawings and specifications.
Metric tontonne1,000 kg2,204.62Anything imported or engineered abroad — European and Asian equipment ratings, steel mill certificates, international shipping.

Rule of thumb worth memorizing: a long ton is exactly 12% heavier than a short ton, and a metric ton is about 10% heavier. On a 20-ton order that is two to two and a half extra tons of material, or of invoice.

Five more tons that are not weights at all

NIST lists eight different units called a ton in the same appendix. Only the three above are masses. The rest share the word and measure something else entirely, which is where a lot of jobsite confusion starts.

  • Ton of refrigeration — 12,000 Btu per hour, or 3,516.85 W. A rate of heat removal, defined from the heat needed to melt a short ton of ice in a day. A "5-ton unit" on a roof weighs a lot more than five tons.
  • Ton-force — 2,000 lbf, or 8,896.44 N. A force, not a mass. Press and jack ratings use it.
  • Register ton — 100 ft³ of enclosed volume on a ship, 2.831685 m³. A volume.
  • Assay ton — 29.166 67 g. A tiny laboratory sample mass, sized so that the milligrams of metal recovered from it read directly as troy ounces per short ton of ore.
  • Ton of TNT — 4.184 gigajoules exactly. An energy.

What a legal truck can actually carry

The most common reason a jobsite converts tons is to work out how many trucks a load will take. On the Interstate System and its reasonable access routes, 23 CFR 658.17 sets the ceilings, and they are gross weights that include the truck itself:

  • 80,000 lb gross vehicle weight — 40 short tons of tractor, trailer and payload together.
  • 20,000 lb on any single axle, 34,000 lb on a tandem.
  • All of it inclusive of enforcement tolerances, so there is no built-in margin to spend.

Take the empty weight off and a typical over-the-road dump or transfer is left with somewhere around 20 to 25 short tons of payload. That is why a dense or wet material fills the weight limit long before it fills the bed — the arithmetic for that is in the excavation volume and truckloads calculator, which compares the load by volume against the load by legal weight and tells you which one governs.

How it's calculated

How the conversion is done
result = amount × (kg per from-unit) ÷ (kg per to-unit)
Everything is taken to kilograms and back out again, so no chain of rounded factors can build up an error.
The exact factors, all of them
lb = 0.45359237 kg · oz = lb/16 · kip = 1,000 lb · short ton = 2,000 lb = 907.18474 kg · long ton = 2,240 lb = 1,016.0469088 kg · metric ton = 1,000 kg
Every one of these is exact, not rounded: the avoirdupois pound has been defined as exactly 0.453 592 37 kg since the 1959 international yard and pound agreement, and the tons are whole multiples of it.
The three tons against each other
1 long ton = 1.12 short tons · 1 metric ton = 1.10231 short tons · 1 short ton = 0.90718474 metric tons
A long ton is exactly 12% heavier than a short ton — 2,240 ÷ 2,000. A metric ton is about 10.2% heavier.

Frequently asked questions

2,000 lb if it is a short ton, which is what "ton" means in the United States unless someone says otherwise. A long ton is 2,240 lb and a metric ton is 1,000 kg, which works out to 2,204.62 lb. If a quote, a ticket or a spec does not say which, ask — the gap between a short ton and a metric ton is 205 lb, and on a 20-ton order that is over 4,000 lb.

A short ton is 2,000 lb, the everyday US ton, used for aggregate, asphalt, steel and scrap. A long ton is 2,240 lb, the old British imperial ton, still used in the US for a few commodities such as iron ore and for ship displacement. A metric ton, or tonne, is 1,000 kg, which is 2,204.62 lb — nearly the same as a long ton and about 10% more than a short ton.

Close, but not the same. A metric ton is 2,204.62 lb and a long ton is 2,240 lb, so a long ton is about 1.6% heavier. They are near enough that people treat them as interchangeable in conversation and far enough apart to matter on an invoice.

907.18474 kg exactly, because a short ton is 2,000 lb and the pound is defined as exactly 0.453 592 37 kg. That definition is not a measurement or an approximation — it was set by the 1959 international yard and pound agreement, and NIST publishes it in boldface as an exact factor.

One thousand pounds. Structural engineers use it because it keeps beam and column loads to two or three digits: 80 kips reads better than 80,000 lb. Note the difference between a kip, which is a mass or a force of 1,000 lb, and a ton, which is 2,000 lb — half a short ton, not a whole one.

Because a capacity rating is a maximum under one specific configuration, not a lifting allowance. Boom length, radius, outrigger position, quadrant of work and rigging weight all pull the real number down, and the load chart is the only thing that answers the question. Converting the units of a rating never changes the rating.

On the Interstate System, 23 CFR 658.17 caps gross vehicle weight at 80,000 lb — 40 short tons of truck, trailer and payload together — with 20,000 lb on any single axle and 34,000 lb on a tandem, all inclusive of enforcement tolerances. Subtract the empty weight of the rig and the payload left is usually somewhere between 20 and 25 short tons, which is why a dense material fills the weight limit before it fills the bed.

No, and it is the most confusing unit on this page's list. A ton of refrigeration is a rate of heat removal — 12,000 Btu per hour, or 3,516.85 watts, defined as the heat needed to melt one short ton of ice in a day. NIST lists it in the same appendix as the tons that do weigh something, which is exactly why the word causes so much trouble. This converter deliberately handles masses only.

Sources & references

Content checked against these sources — last reviewed August 30, 2026.

By — Editorial team of SteelToeTools.com (published by LSEA SAS) Updated v1