Enter your box and your order — get the real count per container, how many containers the whole order needs, the cube fill, and how they stack. Turnable tries every orientation; weight caps the count when your product is dense; mixed sizes each load as their own block — the same math a loader runs before a booking.
Your box & order
inches & lb
40′ High Cube · loaded
The read
Boxes per container—
Containers for your order—
Cube fill— %
Weight / container— lb
Enter a box size to see how many fit.
Enter a box
Pick your container above, then enter your box size, weight and order quantity.
Real rate from a BC-based specialist · 20 years on Canada-US lanes · No commitment
Get a rate on this freight
A BC-based specialist prices it and emails you back — free, no obligation. Your freight carries over from the calculator; just add the lane.
Your freight — carried from the calculator
Please add origin, destination, your name and a valid email.
The calculator stays free. We only use this to send your rate — no spam.
✓ Sent
Your rate is on the way.
A specialist is pricing your freight and will email it shortly — usually same business day.
A real person prices it. We never auto-generate a number we can't stand behind.
Boxes in a container, answered
The questions shippers ask most about container fill, cube and weight limits — answered plainly by a BC-based cross-border freight specialist.
How many boxes fit in a 40ft container?
It depends on your box, but the method is exact. A 40ft High Cube is about 473 × 92 × 106 in inside. A 20×20×20 in box goes 23 long × 4 wide × 5 high = 460 boxes, about 80% cube fill. Change the box size and the count changes — the calculator above does it instantly and also caps the number by container weight.
How do you calculate how many boxes fit in a container?
Divide the container's inside length, width and height by the box's, round each down to a whole number, then multiply the three. If the box can be turned, try every orientation and keep the one that fits the most. Then check weight: the total can't exceed the container's payload, so divide payload by box weight and take whichever limit — space or weight — is smaller.
What are the inside dimensions of a 20ft and 40ft container?
Approximate internal dimensions: a 20ft Standard is ~232×92×94 in (~62,000 lb payload); a 40ft Standard ~473×92×94 in; a 40ft High Cube ~473×92×106 in (~58,600 lb); a 45ft High Cube ~534×92×106 in. Actual dimensions vary slightly by container line, so confirm on the booking.
Does box weight limit how many fit in a container?
Yes — space is only half the answer. A 40ft High Cube caps around 58,600 lb of payload, so a dense product fills by weight before it fills by space. For a 20×20×20 box, 460 fit by space, but at 128 lb each you hit the weight limit near 457, and heavier still means fewer. The calculator always checks both and leads with whichever runs out first.
How do you load a container with mixed box sizes?
The safe way is to give each box size its own block, loaded nose to door, so the crew can build it cleanly and nothing is over-promised. A tighter interleaved pack can fit slightly more but is harder to load in practice. Add a second or third box above and the tool plans each as its own block, then tells you how many containers the whole order needs.
What does cube fill mean?
Cube fill is how much of the container's volume your boxes actually use. Rigid boxes rarely reach 100% because whole boxes leave gaps at the edges — a 20×20×20 box in a 40ft High Cube fills about 80%, the rest lost to leftover inches on each axis. Higher cube fill means fewer containers for the same order. Turn the box or tweak its size and watch the fill move — get a rate once it looks right.
How the fit math works. The tool divides the container's inside length × width × height by your box, rounds each down to whole boxes, and multiplies — that's the floor grid times the layers to the ceiling. Turnable tries every orientation and keeps the one that fits the most; untick it and the box stays "this side up" (only the footprint rotates). A loading gap leaves a little tolerance around each box. Max stack caps the layers if your product can't be piled to the ceiling. Then weight caps the count: the boxes in one container can't exceed its payload, so the answer is the smaller of the space fit and the weight fit — the tool tells you which one bound it. It's a conservative planner, not a booked load plan. For a mixed load each box size gets its own block nose-to-door — honest and buildable, but it won't interleave sizes to chase the last few boxes, so it errs toward one more container, never one fewer. Real cartons also flex, settle and get hand-stacked; treat the count as a tight plan and let a specialist confirm the final load and the rate.