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TEU

cargo unit
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Also known as: 20-foot equivalent unit
Written by
Erik Gregersen
Erik Gregersen is a senior editor at Encyclopaedia Britannica, specializing in the physical sciences and technology. Before joining Britannica in 2007, he worked at the University of Chicago Press on the...
Erik Gregersen
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In full:
20-foot equivalent unit

TEU, standard unit for cargo capacity for container ships and ports. The TEU refers to a shipping container that measures 20 feet long (6.1 meters), 8 feet 6 inches (2.6 meters) high, and 8 feet (2.4 meters) wide.

High-cube shipping containers have a height of 9 feet 6 inches (2.9 meters) and half-height containers have a height of 4 feet 3 inches (1.3 meters). However, both containers are counted as 1 TEU. A related unit is the 40-foot equivalent unit (FEU), which refers to a shipping container with dimensions of 40 feet long (12.2 meters), 8 feet 6 inches high, and 8 feet wide. Two TEU equals 1 FEU. The 40-foot containers are the most commonly used.

An average container ship carries about 4,600 TEU; as of 2025 the largest container ships, the MSC Irina and its five sister ships, each have a capacity of 24,346 TEU. The total capacity of the global container ship fleet is about 31 million TEU.

Erik Gregersen