What is a TEU?

TEU stands for Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit, the standard unit used to measure container capacity and volume across the shipping industry. One TEU equals a single 20-foot shipping container. A standard 40-foot container — the most common size on the road — counts as two TEUs.

TEUs let the industry compare apples to apples: a vessel's capacity, a port's annual throughput, and a terminal's congestion are all expressed in TEUs regardless of the mix of 20-foot and 40-foot boxes involved. When a port reports moving 9 million TEUs a year, that is the total container volume normalized to the 20-foot standard.

For drayage, TEU counts translate directly into truck moves and chassis demand: each container hauled off a terminal is one drayage move, so higher TEU volume at a gateway means more pressure on local drayage capacity, chassis pools, and appointment slots.