What is a twenty-foot-equivalent unit (TEU)?
Containerships carry goods in metal boxes called containers, which are loaded and sealed at the factory or source, picked up by truck or rail to a shipping port, and transferred to a container ship. At the receiving end, the process is reversed. Typical containers are about 8’ x 8’ x 40’. This approximates the size of the trailer of a standard tractor-trailer rig on the highway. However some containers are 20’ in length and occasionally containers can be 50’. But 40’ is the most common length, followed by 20’. The container industry measures the capacity of a ship in TEUs, or twenty-foot-equivalent units. A 20’ container equals 1 TEU. The common 40’container equals 2 TEUs. So a ship with a capacity of 4,000 TEUs could carry (a) 4,000 20’ containers (b) 2,000 40’ containers or (c) any combination that adds up to 4,000 TEUs. An average size container ship in New York Harbor is around 3,000 to 4,000 TEUs, but new container ships are being built with capacities of over 10,000 TEUs. A 5,000
