Container pallet planner

A 40 ft container takes 20 pallets of 48x40 on its floor and a 20 ft container takes 9, on the planner's maths below. Choose the box, the pallet size and the stacking, and the plan redraws to scale.

ContainerPallet sizeStacking

20 pallets

20 on the floor. Orientation: mixed columns, some turned a quarter.

Floor plan to scale, doors at the right end. Container 11998 x 2330 mm inside.

What this assumes

Maximum inside dimensions of the ISO container (11998 x 2330 x 2654 mm), no pallet overhang, nothing lost to door gear or dunnage. A real box is a little smaller, so treat the count as the ceiling.
One level of cuts: whole columns across the width or whole rows along the length, each in a single orientation. A hand-built pinwheel can occasionally add a pallet.
Double stacking doubles the count and assumes the loaded height of one pallet is at most half the inside height (2654 mm). Weight limits are not checked.

The counts

Pallet	20 ft	40 ft	40 ft high cube	40 ft double
48 x 40 in	9	20	20	40
48 x 45 in	8	18	18	36
48 x 42 in	9	20	20	40
42 x 42 in	10	22	22	44
48 x 48 in	4	9	9	18
Euro 800 x 1200 mm	11	23	23	46

The Euro pallet beats the 48x40 because 800 mm pairs into the width, and the 48x48 fits once across it. Pallets should pack tightly in intermodal containers and vans to avoid shipping air (PHS), so the count often decides the pallet size.

What the planner assumes

It uses the maximum interior dimensions of each box: 5,867 x 2,330 mm for a 20 ft and 11,998 x 2,330 mm for a 40 ft. It packs pallets flat with no overhang, fills columns of one orientation, then tries strips of another, and takes the better answer. A hand-built pinwheel can add a pallet; real boxes run slightly smaller.

Height rarely matters. The standard 20 ft box is 2,350 mm high inside, the 40 ft 2,654 mm and the high cube 2,718 mm, and a pallet is only 5.5 to 6 inches tall, so floor area limits a load of light cartons.

Reading the result

The count is a ceiling, not a booking. Double-stacked 48x40 in a 40 ft box comes to 40 only if the freight is light and short enough to sit two high. Pallets go in from the door end, and a row or half-row at the door is often left looser so the loader can reach and close the doors, so a few pallets fewer ship. Lashing space and dunnage cut it further.

Weight usually binds before floor space on heavy freight. 20 empty 48x40s at about 37 lb weigh around 740 lb; a load of 2,000 lb on each adds 40,000 lb, and the container's own payload limit, not the floor, caps it.

Hand the result to the request

The Copy button puts the result on the clipboard. Paste it into the message box of the form below with the date you need the pallets, the town they go to, the weight per pallet and whether they carry the ISPM 15 mark. Export pallets need that mark whatever the count: see the stamp guide and heat-treated pallets.

Questions

Why does a 48x48 pallet fit so few?

At 1,219 mm square it fits once across the 2,330 mm width, so a 40 ft box takes 9 on the floor.

Do the counts include dunnage?

No. They assume nothing between pallets and no overhang.

Keep reading

Sources, reviewed 12 November 2026: Intermodal container (Wikipedia); Pallet sizes (PHS).