A TEU, or twenty-foot equivalent unit, is the standard measure of container capacity based on a twenty-foot box. A forty-foot container counts as two TEU and is also called one FEU, forty-foot equivalent unit. Vessel sizes, port volumes, and trade statistics are all quoted in TEU.
The unit abstracts away box variety: a ship described as 24,000 TEU can carry that many twenty-foot equivalents in whatever mix of twenty- and forty-foot containers fits. Most cargo actually moves in forty-foot and high-cube boxes, so a vessel’s container count is roughly half its TEU figure.
TEU is a volume-slot measure, not a weight measure: a slot is a slot whether the box is empty or at maximum gross. Weight limits constrain vessels separately, which is why heavy cargo ships out below nominal TEU capacity.
TEU appears in tracking as context rather than as an event: the size of the vessel carrying your box, the throughput of the ports it calls, the capacity a blank sailing removes. TrackingMCP’s port pages express activity in sailings and vessel calls, and the carrier pages show the services your shipments ride.
A TEU, or twenty-foot equivalent unit, is the standard measure of container capacity based on a twenty-foot box. A forty-foot container counts as two TEU and is also called one FEU, forty-foot equivalent unit. Vessel sizes, port volumes, and trade statistics are all quoted in TEU.
For capacity accounting, yes: one forty-foot unit occupies two twenty-foot slots. Physical dimensions differ slightly from a strict doubling, but the unit is a slot count, not a tape measure.
No. TEU counts footprint length, not height. A forty-foot high-cube is still two TEU; its extra height matters for stack planning, not slot arithmetic.
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