How We Fill a 40ft Container Without Wasting Space
A 40ft high-cube holds about 76 CBM, but almost nobody ships 76. Here is how we plan a load so you are paying freight on furniture rather than on air.
Freight is charged on the space a shipment occupies, not on what it weighs — and furniture is light for its size. A badly planned container can leave a quarter of its volume empty, which is a cost that lands on the landed price of every piece inside it.
Start from CBM, not from piece count
Every product on this site carries a CBM figure — the cubic metres one packed piece occupies. It is the number that decides what fits, so it is the first thing to plan around.
- 20ft: roughly 28 CBM usable
- 40ft: roughly 58 CBM usable
- 40ft high-cube: roughly 68 CBM usable
Those are working figures, not the theoretical maximums. Packing materials, pallets and the gaps between irregular shapes all take room, so we plan to about 85–90% of the nominal volume. A load calculated to the theoretical number is a load that does not close.
Mix large and small deliberately
A container of nothing but wardrobes wastes space; so does a container of nothing but stools. The efficient loads are mixed — tall case goods form the walls, and the cavities they create are filled with nesting tables, stools and boxed accessories. When you send us a wish list, send the whole list rather than the headline pieces. We will usually come back suggesting a different ratio, because the mix is what brings the per-piece freight cost down.
Knock-down where it earns its keep
Some designs ship flat without any loss of quality: dining tables with bolt-on legs, bed frames, shelving. Others should never be broken down, because the joinery is the piece. We will tell you honestly which is which. Knocking down a table can save half its shipping volume; knocking down a hand-carved cabinet just adds risk at the other end.
What packing actually looks like
- Corners and edges protected individually, then the whole piece wrapped
- Glass and mirror crated separately, never loose in the container
- Moisture absorbers through the load — six weeks at sea is a humid journey
- Every carton marked with your reference, not only ours, so the unpacking end matches it to the order without opening anything
Before you commit to a size
Send us the list and the port. We will come back with the CBM total, the container size it genuinely needs, and — if you are close to a threshold — what you could add to make the next size up worth booking. It is a short conversation that regularly saves more than it costs.
