A novel single probe bolt axial stress measurement method is put forward using the group speed ratio of different high order modes of cylindrical guided wave based on the propagation characteristics of high-frequency ultrasonic guided wave in metal rod parts. The Pochhammer-Chree equation considering the grain scattering attenuation is solved with numerical method. Then, the dispersion curves of group velocity and attenuation coefficient for guided wave are obtained, and the propagation laws of the guided wave in highfrequency region are analyzed. Next, the bolt axial stress measurement method based on the group speed ratio is derived based on the nonlinear acoustics and elastic mechanics theory. The ultrasonic stress measurement platform was built. The characteristics of the ultrasonic pulse-echo guided wave signals are discussed, the empirical wavelet transform algorithm is proposed to conduct mode decomposition of the signals and acquire the group velocity of a specific mode in the signal. A bolt axial stress calibration / measurement comparison experiment was carried out using the proposed method and the traditional method with the transit time ratio of the longitudinal wave and transverse wave. The results indicate that the average measurement error of the proposed method is only about 4% , which is significantly better than that of the traditional method ( average measurement error 6% ), and the proposed method has a more concise measurement process.