Frankly, what’s a TEU? Sounds strange..

A TEU actually stands for Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit. Which, actually stands for the regular 20′ containers you find in container ports all over the world.

More on TEU here.

Officially: it’s a 20-foot (6.1 m) long shipping container. What about those 40′ containers? They are referred regularly as 2 TEU instead.

The economy of a country is usually viewed from the container ports of the country, with respect to import/export business. Therefore, TEU is a way to judge the profitability of a container port, based on the quantity of containers every year.

Here’s a list of the world’s busiest ports.

Make sure you learn this, because this term is used fairly regularly in the shipping business! Don’t show your weakness by asking ‘what’s a TEU?’ :) You’ll thank me for saving your day ;)