What is a TEU?

A TEU is one twenty-foot container's worth of space; a 40ft box counts as two and a 45ft as 2.25. Per TEU the boxes are far from equal: a 20ft carries 28,330 kg of payload against 13,800 kg for a 40ft, while one 40ft takes 25 EUR1 pallets and two 20fts only 22.

By Oliver Bennett · Published 29 October 2026 · Data as of 27 October 2026, from spec sheets retrieved that day

TEU stands for twenty-foot equivalent unit. It measures container capacity in multiples of a 20ft box, so a ship of 20,000 TEU has slots, in principle, for 20,000 twenty-foot containers or 10,000 forty-foot ones. A 40ft box is sometimes called an FEU, a forty-foot equivalent unit, which is simply two TEU. Counting by length, a 45ft container is 2.25 TEU, and that is how PalletSpec counts it.

The unit suits ships and terminals, which sell slots by length. It says much less about what a box will carry, because neither weight nor pallets scale with length.

All 16 container types in TEU

A 40ft is not two 20fts

Outside, a 40ft container is 12,192 mm long against 12,116 mm for two 20ft boxes end to end, so the two take nearly the same slot. Inside they differ more. The 40ft has one floor 12,030 mm long; two 20ft boxes give two floors of 5,897 mm, 11,794 mm in all, broken by four end walls and two sets of doors.

That unbroken length is worth pallets. One 40ft takes 25 EUR1 pallets, two 20ft boxes 22. For the 48×40 the figures are 20 and 18. The Australian 1165×1165 is the exception: it fits the 20ft floor so closely that two 20fts and one 40ft both carry 20.

Weight runs the other way. Two 20ft boxes weigh 4,300 kg empty against 3,695 kg for one 40ft, but each 20ft is typically rated to the same 30,480 kg gross as the 40ft. So the pair can carry 56,660 kg of cargo and the single box 27,600 kg.

Payload per TEU

All of the top five places go to 20ft boxes, and the gap is large: a 20ft dry container carries 28,330 kg per TEU, a 40ft 13,800 kg. For dense cargo the 20ft box is often the better buy, even when the volume would suit a 40ft.

Spread evenly over the floor positions, the typical payload allows about 2,575 kg per EUR1 position in a 20ft and 1,104 kg in a 40ft. This is arithmetic on published figures, not a loading limit, but it shows which box a heavy pallet load will fill by weight long before it fills by space.

Pallet positions per TEU

If you buy freight by the TEU, the useful figure is how many pallets each TEU actually holds. The table divides the best single-layer floor count by the box's TEU.

The 45ft pallet-wide leads for EUR1 pallets with 14.7 positions per TEU, against 12.5 in a 40ft and 11.0 in a 20ft, so its 2.25 TEU rating understates what it carries for European shippers. At the other end, the Australian pallet manages only 4.0 positions per TEU in a 20ft reefer, because the insulated walls leave room for just one pallet across.

For the 48×40 the numbers are flatter: 9.0 per TEU in a 20ft and 10.0 in a 40ft or high cube. A high cube counts the same TEU as a standard 40ft but can take a second layer of pallets up to 1,347 mm tall, which doubles its positions per TEU for low loads; double stacking pallets has the height limits for every box.

Volume per TEU is covered in container volume in cubic metres and cubic feet, and the weights behind the payload figures in container tare, payload and gross weights.

More guides: 20ft vs 40ft vs 40ft high cube containers · Shipping container door dimensions · Container weights: tare, payload and max gross · Reefer vs dry container: what the insulation costs · Open top vs flat rack vs platform containers · How many pallets fit in a 40ft container? · How many pallets fit in a 53 ft trailer? · All guides