PalletLab · Reference
How many cartons fit in a container?
260 floor-loaded 600 × 400 cartons in a 20 ft container. The exact count, carton by carton and container by container.
The short answer
For the most common carton, 600 × 400 × 400 mm, a 20 ft container holds 260 cartons floor-loaded, that is 52 per layer over 5 layers. A 40 ft holds 550, and the 40 ft High Cube goes up to 660 thanks to its extra layer.
These counts assume floor-loading, from floor to ceiling, in full layers of flat-lying cartons, with both orientations mixed within the layer. It is the maximum geometry allows, before weight and handling constraints.
Cartons per container, floor-loaded
| Carton (mm) | 20 ft | 40 ft | 40 ft High Cube |
|---|---|---|---|
| 600 × 400 × 400 | 260 | 550 | 660 |
| 400 × 300 × 300 | 770 | 1 610 | 1 840 |
| 300 × 200 × 200 | 2 475 | 5 060 | 5 980 |
Interior dimensions: 20 ft 5.90 × 2.35 × 2.39 m, 40 ft 12.03 × 2.35 × 2.39 m, High Cube 2.70 m under the ceiling. Full layers computed by the PalletLab Palletization engine.
Floor-loaded or on pallets?
Floor-loading wins on count, pallets win at the dock. On Euro pallets loaded to 1.80 m, the same 600 × 400 × 400 mm carton stacks at 16 cartons per pallet, that is 144 cartons in a 20 ft (9 pallets) and 320 in a 40 ft (20 pallets). That is 45% less than floor-loading, but hours saved at loading and unloading, and better protected goods.
Weight sometimes decides before volume: at 10 kg per carton, a 20 ft tops out at 2,170 cartons for its 21.7 tonnes of payload, before small cartons even fill the volume.