How Big Is a 40 ft Shipping Container?
Inside: about 39.5 ft long, 7.7 ft wide and 7.8 ft high, 67 cubic meters. A high cube adds a foot.
Drag to turn. The figure is a 5 ft 9 in person.
40 ft shipping container in numbers
- Inside size drawn: 39.46 ft long × 7.67 ft wide × 7.83 ft high
- Volume: 2,370 cubic feet · 87.8 cubic yards · 67.1 m³ · 17,727 gallons
- Medium moving boxes (18 x 18 x 16 in): about 792 by volume
- Full contractor bags (42 gallon, about 5.6 cu ft): about 313 by volume
- 3-seat sofas (84 x 36 x 34 in): about 40 by volume
- Queen mattresses (60 x 80 x 10 in): about 86 by volume
- Refrigerators (36 in wide, kept upright): about 49 by volume
- Washing machines (27 in wide, kept upright): about 146 by volume
- Cubic yards of dirt or mulch (3 x 3 x 3 ft): about 88 by volume
"By volume" is total space divided by item size. Real loads leave gaps; the 3D view above counts how many fit when packed tightly.
A standard 40 foot shipping container is 40 feet long, 8 feet wide and 8.5 feet high outside. Inside it is about 39 feet 5 inches long, 7 feet 8 inches wide and 7 feet 10 inches high, around 2,370 cubic feet or 67 cubic meters: two TEU.
The high cube version is 9.5 feet high outside, adding about a foot of headroom inside and roughly 300 more cubic feet. Pick “40 ft high cube container” in the menu to see the difference.
The floor is about 300 square feet, close to two parking spaces end to end.