The real numbers a 40HQ gives you
Internal dimensions on a standard 40 foot high cube are 12.03 m long, 2.35 m wide and 2.69 m high, which is 76.1 cubic metres of geometric volume and 28.3 square metres of floor. Tare weight is around 3,900 kg and the maximum payload is 26,000 to 28,600 kg depending on the box. On European roads the practical ceiling is lower, because the tractor and trailer axle limits usually cap the gross combination at 40 tonnes, which leaves 24 to 25 tonnes of cargo before anything else is considered.
Restaurant furniture is a volume cargo. A stackable side chair weighs 4.8 kg and occupies 0.11 cubic metres as a single unit, so a container filled to its 26 tonne payload with that chair would need 5,400 pieces and about 590 cubic metres of space. Volume runs out roughly seven times faster than weight. Chairs, booths and tables are all mostly air once they are packed, and the packing job is to reduce that air legally rather than to chase tonnage.
The useful benchmark is volume utilisation, measured as the volume of packed cartons and bundles against the 76.1 cubic metres of the box. A careful load reaches 78 to 86 percent. Below 72 percent you are paying for empty air on a per unit basis and should be re-planning the packing or the order quantity. Above 88 percent, the load becomes difficult to close and the risk of damage in the last two rows rises faster than the freight saving.
Stacking plans by item type
Chairs are the easiest cargo and the one where the plan pays most. Non-stacking side chairs nest two per carton in most of our ranges, giving 0.055 cubic metres per pair, and cartons stack six high without deformation when the carton board is 5 ply at 1,200 grams. Stacking chairs are the exception in the good sense: an 8 high stack of one model travels as a single strapped bundle at 0.42 cubic metres for eight pieces, which is 0.052 cubic metres per chair and eliminates the carton entirely.
Tables are where loads fail. Tops should be crated flat rather than cartoned, stacked a maximum of 20 pieces with 3 mm foam interleaves and a 12 mm plywood cap on top and bottom, because a top that is packed on edge takes the whole stack load through its own thin section and bows. A 700 mm square top at 25 mm is 0.012 cubic metres of material but occupies 0.019 cubic metres crated, and the 20 piece stack is 0.38 cubic metres for a bundle that weighs 190 kg. Bases travel separately: cast iron plates on a pallet in a maximum of 12 high stacks, columns bundled in sixes, and every plate wrapped so that two plates cannot touch.
Fixed restaurant booth seating is the item that decides whether the load closes. A booth back is typically 1,200 mm long, 900 mm high and 120 mm thick, which is 0.13 cubic metres as a standalone piece and cannot be compressed. Twenty booths for a 90 cover room consume 2.6 cubic metres before any packing material. Because booths are rigid and heavy, they go in first, against the nose, standing on their backs with foam between faces and strapping at 600 mm centres.
Whether you are buying loose items or restaurant table and chair sets, the stacking plan should be agreed before production starts, not before shipping, because it changes how the factory packs and sometimes how it builds. A base that ships knocked down saves 30 to 40 percent of its cubic volume but needs assembly instructions and a torque specification at the destination.
Getting from 72 to 86 percent
The gap between a lazy load and a good one is mostly void fill at the top and along the doors. Cargo rarely reaches the 2.69 m ceiling because the last rows have to be loaded by hand and nobody wants to build a staircase. The result is a 400 to 600 mm air gap across the full 12 metres, which is 11 to 17 cubic metres, or up to a fifth of the box.
Three techniques recover most of it. Load the tall rigid items first against the nose so the profile steps down toward the doors rather than up. Use flat-packed items as infill on top of rigid cargo rather than leaving them as a separate block at the end. And pack glides, hardware and small parts into the gaps around table pedestals, which are otherwise dead space. Hardware cartons at 0.02 cubic metres each can absorb 1.5 cubic metres of what would have been air.
Do not fill the last 300 mm at the doors above shoulder height with heavy cartons. That is the zone that moves when the container brakes, and a 25 kg carton at 1.8 m has enough energy in a 0.5 g deceleration to break through the door panel. Keep the top rear 300 mm to light, soft goods or leave it empty and accept the small volume loss.
Moisture is the failure that arrives late
A steel container crossing the tropics at 35 degrees and arriving in a European winter produces container rain: moisture condensing on the inside of the roof and dripping onto the top layer of cargo. The water comes from two places, the cargo and the air. Wood at 10 to 12 percent moisture content in a 76 cubic metre box can release 100 to 150 litres of water as it equalises, and the air itself carries more than most buyers expect.
The countermeasures are cheap and specific. Desiccant at 500 grams per cubic metre of cargo volume, so around 30 to 35 kg for a full load, hung in mesh bags at 1.2 m intervals along both side walls and across the doors. A container liner bag, 40 micron, fixed to the ceiling and walls, which separates cargo from the steel surface where condensation forms. And for any steel parts, VCI paper or bags rather than grease, because grease has to be removed before installation and always leaves a mark on upholstery.
The cargo side is where the specification matters. Lumber and solid wood table and chair set components should ship at 8 to 10 percent moisture content, measured with a pin meter on five pieces per bundle at 20 mm depth before packing. Anything above 12 percent will equalise inside the container and the water has to go somewhere, which is onto the nearest cold surface, usually a chrome frame or a powder coated leg.
Corner protection is part of the same job. A 12 mm corner board on every vertical carton edge, edge protectors on crated tops, and two 20 mm steel straps per bundle at 400 mm from each end. Strapping tension matters: enough to stop movement, not enough to crush a 5 ply carton, which happens somewhere above 350 kg of strap tension on a 300 mm wide face.
Mixed loads and the centre of gravity
Most restaurant orders are mixed: tables, chairs, booths, service counters, sometimes a counter-height run. The load has to be arranged so that weight is distributed rather than concentrated. Keep any single 2 metre section of the floor under 60 percent of the total cargo weight, and keep the heavier items on the floor rather than on top of crates.
Centre of gravity should sit low and near the middle. A load with 8 tonnes of cast iron table bases at the nose and 4 tonnes of chairs at the doors will handle badly on a trailer and can exceed the axle limit at the front of the container. Spread the bases in two blocks, one at 3 to 5 metres and one at 7 to 9 metres from the nose, and use chairs as the buffer between them.
A specific example from our own loading sheets: a 90 cover project with 22 tables, 84 chairs and 18 booth modules loads at 21.4 tonnes and 66 cubic metres, which is 87 percent utilisation. The booths take the first 3.2 metres, the table tops are crated flat at 3.2 to 6.5 metres, bases on pallets at 6.5 to 8.8, chairs to 11.2, and the last 0.8 metres holds hardware and glides. Centre of gravity lands at 42 percent of the length from the nose, which is well inside the safe band.
For a mixed order like the JP-S010 booth seating set combined with loose tables, agree the loading plan with a diagram at carton level, not at item level. The diagram should show the height profile from the nose to the doors, because that profile is what tells you whether the last row will close.
Sequence, documentation and the seal
Load from the nose forward and unload from the doors back, which means the last items loaded are the first the site needs. On a restaurant fit-out the sequence is almost always booths and fixed seating first, then tables, then chairs, because the floor and the fixed elements have to be in before loose furniture arrives. Number every carton by zone, not by product code: B1 to B18 for booth modules, T1 to T22 for tables, and so on. A site team that can read a zone number off a carton will halve the installation time.
Photograph the load in rows. One frame per metre of container length, taken from the doorway as each row is completed, plus a final frame of the closed load before the doors shut. Those 12 to 15 photographs are the only evidence that exists if a claim is made about crushed cartons, and a supplier who cannot produce them is a supplier who was not watching.
Record the seal number on the packing list and the bill of lading, and take a photograph of the seal itself fitted to the door lock. Also record the verified gross mass, because a container that is declared light and weighs heavy at the terminal gets pulled and delayed, and the cost of that delay lands on the buyer's installation schedule.
None of this is exotic, and a restaurant furniture manufacturer who ships regularly will have the template already. Ask to see a past loading report with photographs before you place the order; it tells you more about how the factory works than any brochure. If you want to see how the plan applies to your own schedule, restaurant furniture products on the site are all dimensioned, and a custom restaurant furniture enquiry can start from the container: tell us the box you want to fill and we will size the order to it.
What goes wrong at the destination
Roughly one load in six arrives with some damage, and the causes are consistent. Crushed cartons in the top rear corner, where the load gap allowed movement. Rust freckles on powder coated legs, where condensation ran down a strap. Bowed table tops, where a stack was packed on edge instead of flat. Chipped edges on the outermost chairs of a bundle, where no corner board was fitted.
Every one of those is prevented by a packing specification rather than by better handling. Write it down: carton board grade, stack heights, interleaf thickness, corner board size, strap positions, desiccant quantity, liner bag, moisture content at packing, and the requirement for row photographs. Attach it to the purchase order as an annex, so that it is a condition of the contract rather than a preference.
Then verify it once at loading. A 90 minute inspection at the factory, with a moisture meter and a tape measure, is the cheapest part of the whole import. The alternative is discovering the problem 30 days later, 9,000 km away, with a room full of chairs that cannot be opened, and a claim that will recover perhaps 60 percent of the replacement cost if you have the photographs.