From USD 800.00 to over USD 4000.00, depending on the city, port, and country you are shipping from. The price can also depend on the seasons and special circumstances. During 2020, containers from Asia skyrocketed in price due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as the demand for Chinese products increased and steamship carriers were not able to fulfill the demand. As a consequence, we saw an increase in the cost of a container loading in China from approximately USD 2800 to and over USD 13000 per 40’ container, between two and four times the regular price. The rise in prices of petroleum and fossil fuels has also played a huge role in the increase of all types of transportation.

Containers are 20’, 40’, and 45’ boxes with all sides made of steel and a wooden floor. The wooden floor is used to properly block and brace the merchandise by using wood, chains, and cables with nails or screws driven into the floor. All of these containers are stowed and stacked onto each other in the form of blocks by interconnecting them using twist-locks. The twist-locks are inserted into each of the four corner castings. The corner castings are made of extended holes where the lug of the twist-lock secures itself. This is how containers are transported worldwide on cellular vessels.

The cellular vessel is a type of ocean carrier that’s fully specialized in container transportation. Around the world, there are approximately 5,220 ocean cellular vessels at the service of the container transportation industry. Today, the biggest vessel can transport 21,413 TEUs, which is the equivalent of twenty-one 413 X 20’ containers or ten 706 X 40’ containers, with a maximum of 191,317 metric tons in weight.

A Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit (TEU) is a unit of measure used by steamship carriers; 20’ containers are measured as 1 TEU while a 40’ container is measured as 2 TEUs.

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