About CartonMath and How the Numbers Are Calculated

Who it is for

CartonMath is a free toolkit for the people who pack, load and document export shipments: factory export departments, e-commerce sellers, warehouse teams and freight forwarders. It answers the everyday questions quickly, and shows its working so you can check it.

How the numbers are worked out

Pallets. Cartons stay upright and may rotate on the deck. Cartons per layer is the best of the two plain orientations and every two-block split of the deck along either edge. Layers are the whole number that fits under the height limit after the deck height. A weight limit, if given, caps the total.

A two-block layer: a block of cartons lengthwise, the strip that is left filled crosswise.

Containers. Each of the carton's three edges is tried as the vertical one; the floor is then planned like a pallet layer and repeated in whole tiers. The best is kept and checked against the typical payload. Pallets per container use the same floor planning with pallet footprints.

Containers are planned floor first, then repeated in whole tiers to the roof.

Volume and weight. CBM = L × W × H in metres × quantity. Volumetric weight = L × W × H ÷ divisor (cm and kg, or inches and lb). Chargeable weight is the higher of actual and volumetric. LCL weight or measure compares cubic metres with metric tons.

The large light carton is billed on its volume, the small heavy one on its weight.

Where the reference values come from

Container internal dimensions and payloads are typical published values for standard dry containers: 20GP 5898 × 2352 × 2393 mm (about 28,000 kg payload), 40GP 12032 × 2352 × 2393 mm (about 26,700 kg), 40HQ 12032 × 2352 × 2698 mm (about 26,500 kg) and 45HQ 13556 × 2352 × 2698 mm (about 25,600 kg). They vary by line and container, so every page labels them typical.

Pallet footprints are the standard sizes: EUR/EPAL 1200 × 800 mm, UK/ISO 1200 × 1000 mm, US GMA 48 × 40 in (1219 × 1016 mm), Asia 1100 × 1100 mm and Australia 1165 × 1165 mm. Deck height defaults to 144 mm for EUR and 150 mm for the others, and you can change it.

Incoterms pages summarise the Incoterms® 2020 rules of the International Chamber of Commerce. Incoterms® is a trademark of the ICC; CartonMath is not affiliated with it.

Data and AI access

All tables are free to reuse under CC BY 4.0 with a link back to CartonMath: containers, pallets, cartons per pallet, volumetric weight and Incoterms (each also as JSON).

AI assistants and agents can read llms.txt for a site guide, llms-full.txt for all data in one file, or add index.md to any page address for a Markdown version. Every calculator accepts URL parameters, listed on its page.

Corrections

Found an error? Email [email protected] with the page and what you checked it against.