48 × 40 pallets in a 40 ft dry container

Our engine fits 20 48 × 40 pallets (1219 × 1016 mm) on the floor of a 40 ft dry container with 12,024 × 2,353 mm inside, and 20 with handling clearance.

Document
LDT-082
Sheet
Load tables
Last reviewed
Sources
2 cited
20Floor positions
20With clearance
87.6%Floor used
12024 × 2353Deck, mm

Layout

12,024 mm2,353 mmFront wallDoors
20 48 × 40 pallets, full inside dimensions. Darker pallets are turned 90°.

The best layout our engine found puts 9 with the 1219 mm side along the length and 11 turned with the 1016 mm side along the length. That covers 87.6% of the floor.

The same 20 pallets still fit after leaving 100 mm of length and 50 mm of width free for handling, so this layout has room to spare.

Floor and door

The 40 ft dry container has 28.3 m² of floor (305 sq ft) inside. In the same box an EPAL 1 takes 25 positions against 20 for the 48 × 40, so the 48 × 40 pallets cover 24.8 m² against 24.0 m² for EPAL 1.

The door opening is 2,340 mm wide, so the 48 × 40, carried narrow side first, clears it by 1,324 mm.

Inputs

Inside length × width12,024 × 2,353 mm
Inside height2,383 mm
Door opening, width × height2,340 × 2,280 mm
Guideline payload26,650 kg
48 × 40 footprint1,219 × 1,016 mm
Equipment sourceLeman USA Inc.. US road/rail-limited guideline payload

Height and weight

EPAL does not publish a height or weight for this pallet, so we cannot compute stacks of empties.

If all 20 clearance positions are filled in one layer, the guideline payload allows on average 1,332 kg of goods per pallet.

Other pallets in the same 40' dry

PalletFloor positionsWith clearance
EPAL 12523
EPAL 22220
EPAL 32220
EPAL 65552
EPAL 75552
CP32020
CP41818
CP53131

How this is computed

The engine tries every split of the deck into rows of pallets placed one way and rows placed the other way, along the length and across the width, and keeps the arrangement with the most pallets. It does not overhang, mix in other pallet sizes or allow for bulging goods. The methodology page explains each step, and the load planner runs the same code on your own dimensions.

Sources

Last reviewed . Figures come from these publications; follow the links for the current versions.

  1. Container specification (guideline), US edition, Leman USA Inc.
  2. Load-count method (computed by this site), epalrecycling.com

What do you need to do with them?

Pick one. Each form takes about a minute and goes to one partner, not a list of dealers.