The shipping container has become indispensable for transport of goods by international waterways, roads and railways. In addition to that, shipping containers are the ideal solution for (temporary) storage. The sizes of the shipping container are especially important when used for international transport. Before shipping by containers it is important to inform about the shipping container sizes and whether these match with the application you have in mind.

Do you want to know the sizes the shipping container that you own, or get to know the sizes? Each container has a pre-fix through which it is possible to find the shipping container sizes.

Standard shipping container sizes

The size of a standard shipping container is 12 x 2,3 x 2,4 m for a 40ft container. The size of a 20ft container is 5,9 x 2,4 x 2,4 m. Shipping container sizes are defined in feet. Please take into account that a standard shipping container does not really exist: each container has its own dimensions.

Below we display the average shipping container sizes for 20ft, 40ft and 40ft high cube containers. These container dimensions are displayed in the metric system (in millimeters).

20ft
Length : 5898 mm, Height : 2390 mm, Width : 2350 mm, Tare Weight : 2.180 kg

40ft
Length : 12032 mm, Height : 2385 mm, Width : 2345 mm, Tare Weight : 3.620 kg

40ft hc
Length : 12032 mm, Height : 2698 mm, Width : 2352 mm, Tare Weight : 3.820 kg

Length of a shipping container (meters)

The length of a shipping container is 20 or 40ft. The most common length is 40 foot which is about 12 meters long. These shipping containers are mainly used for international transport. Besides that there are 20 foot containers which are about 6 meters long. The 20ft shipping container is often used at location, for storage, and are regularly spotted on trucks as well.

Height of a shipping container (meters)

The height of a container is an essential measure to know for loading the goods into the container. The standard height of a shipping container is 2390 millimeter (internally) and 2591 millimeter (externally). In short, a standard shipping container is 2,5 meters high. There are also high cube shipping containers which are slightly higher than the standard container. A high cube container  has a height of 2896 millimeter (externally).

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