Glossary

TEU

Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit — the standard measure of container capacity.

A TEU is the unit that measures container capacity, based on one standard twenty-foot box; a forty-foot container counts as two TEU. Ports, vessels and network throughput are all quoted in TEU, so volumes compare on one consistent scale no matter what mix of box sizes is actually moving. When a port reports millions of TEU a year, this is the unit it counts in.