Container Loading Glass Bottles: 20GP, 40GP and 40HQ Plans

What the Container Loading Plan Has to Fix Before the Box Is Booked

A loading plan is not a document written after the goods are ready. It is the set of decisions taken while the packing spec is still open, because most of what goes wrong inside a container was decided weeks earlier when a carton size or a pallet footprint was chosen. Six figures have to be fixed before a booking is confirmed, and each of them closes off a different option.

The first is the footprint of the unit that will sit on the container floor, whether that unit is a pallet or a single carton. This decides how many of them fit across the container width and along its length, and in the palletized case it also decides whether the pallet can be placed square or has to be turned. The second is the stack height of the finished unit including any pallet deck, top cap or lid, because the container door opening, not the internal ceiling, is the constraint the load has to pass through. The third is the gross weight of that unit, since a dense bottle makes a pallet that a light forklift cannot lift and a hand crew cannot push. The fourth is the count in the unit, expressed as units per layer multiplied by the number of layers, so that the total in the container is a planned number rather than a number discovered at the port. The fifth is the loading mode, palletized or floor loaded, which is the subject of the middle of this page. The sixth is where the weight sits in the box once it is loaded, because a container loaded heavy at one end and light at the other behaves differently on a chassis, and a container whose centre of gravity is high behaves differently again on a vessel.

Two documents come out of those six figures and both should be requested in writing. The first is a loading plan or stowage drawing: a plan view of the container floor showing which unit goes where, how many rows, whether anything is turned, and where the blocking and bracing sits. The second is a loading report or loading photos taken at the point of stuffing, showing the empty box, the loaded box before bracing, the bracing itself and the closed doors with the seal number. For a first order, or for any order where a claim is conceivable, these two documents are worth more than any assurance given verbally, because they show what was actually done rather than what was intended. Ask for them in the purchase order, and ask for them specifically, because a supplier who is not asked will usually not produce them.

20GP, 40GP and 40HQ: Standard Internal Dimensions and What Actually Fits

The three container types most often quoted for glass shipments differ less than buyers expect. A 20GP is roughly six metres long, a 40GP and a 40HQ are roughly twelve metres long, and the 40GP and the 40HQ share the same length and the same width but differ in height. The commonly cited industry reference values for internal dimensions are around 5,898 by 2,352 by 2,393 mm for a 20GP, around 12,032 by 2,352 by 2,393 mm for a 40GP, and around 12,032 by 2,352 by 2,698 mm for a 40HQ. The door opening is smaller than the internal section in every case, roughly 2,340 by 2,280 mm on a 20GP and a 40GP and roughly 2,340 by 2,585 mm on a 40HQ. These are standard values and they vary between boxes, between builders and after years of service, so the working number is always the measurement of the box actually presented.

Three consequences follow for glass. The first is that the door height, not the ceiling, is what limits a tall palletized load, and the difference between a 40GP and a 40HQ is entirely in that dimension, so the extra height of a high cube is worth something only if the finished unit is short enough to gain a tier. The second is that the internal width of about 2,352 mm is a hard ceiling that no pallet format can exceed, and it forces a decision on every pallet that is wider than half of it. The third is that the internal corner posts intrude at the door end, which costs the first row a few centimetres on each side and is the reason a plan that fits on paper sometimes does not fit in the first metre of the box.

Payload is the other half of the envelope and it is the half that surprises buyers of filled glass. A 20GP has a higher payload allowance than a 40 foot box of the same build, and the commonly cited reference value is around 28,000 kg for a 20GP against roughly 26,000 to 27,000 kg for a 40GP and a 40HQ. On a heavy product, and filled glass bottles are heavy, the 20GP therefore carries a higher tonnage in absolute terms even though it has less than half the volume, which is why a dense order is sometimes split across more boxes than the arithmetic of cubic metres alone would suggest. The 40 foot box wins only when the load is bulky rather than heavy, which is the usual case for empty bottles and the less usual case for filled ones. All of these figures are reference values for comparison, and the payload actually permitted depends on the carrier, the road leg, the port regulations and the box itself, so they must be confirmed rather than assumed.

Container Capacity by Loading Mode: How the Three Container Types Compare

The table below sets the three container types against the two loading modes, and it is a comparison of constraints rather than a promise of a count. The reference counts in it are typical figures for a standard export pallet and a standard carton of average density; they move with the pallet footprint, the carton size, the finished load height and the weight of the bottle. Read the column that says what limits the load, because in a glass shipment the binding limit is usually one of three things and the buyer who knows which one applies can plan around it before the order is placed.

Two reading notes belong under that table. The counts are indicative and are not a loading guarantee for any particular order; the pallet figure in particular moves with the pallet footprint, because three common export formats behave differently in the same width. A 1200 by 1000 mm pallet can be placed with the 1000 mm side across the container width, so two pallets occupy about 2,000 mm of the 2,352 mm available and leave a residual strip that must be braced. A 1219 by 1016 mm pallet, the format common in North American trade, places 1,016 mm across the width and 1,219 mm along the length, which uses less width and more length. An 1100 by 1100 mm pallet places 1,100 mm across the width and consumes more floor length per unit than either. None of the three can be placed with its long side across the container, because 1,200 mm doubled exceeds the internal width, and that single geometric fact decides the pallet format for a given trade lane more often than price does.

Pallets or Floor Loading: Which Mode Suits Which Bottle

The choice between a palletized and a floor-loaded shipment is not a matter of taste, and the two modes fail in different ways. Palletizing is the default where the destination can handle a unit load, where the order is a repeating one, and where the receiving plant has a forklift and a dock. It costs floor area, because the pallet deck consumes height on every tier and the pallet gaps consume width, and it costs the pallets themselves, either as a purchase on a one-way load or as a pool account on a returnable route. In exchange it buys speed, safety and a countable unit: a wrapped pallet goes into stock without a recount, and the heavy lifting is done by equipment rather than by people.

Floor loading is the default where the destination has labour but no forklift, where the cartons are strong enough to be stacked to the full internal height of the box, and where the order is a dense product whose weight limit is reached long before its volume limit. It recovers the height that the pallet deck was eating and the width that the pallet gaps were wasting, and on a heavy shipment that can be the difference between one container and two. The cost is at both ends. At origin the block has to be hand-built, carton by carton, with the face of the block tight against the container walls and no voids behind it. At destination every carton has to be lifted out by hand or by whatever the receiver happens to have, and a floor-loaded block that was built badly arrives as a slope rather than a block.

Three practical tests decide the question. The first is whether the cartons can carry the stacking load, because in a floor-loaded container the bottom layer supports everything above it, and corrugated board that has absorbed moisture in a long sea voyage loses a large part of its compression strength. The second is whether the destination can unload the mode chosen, because a floor-loaded shipment delivered to a site with no labour is a demurrage waiting to happen. The third is whether the weight or the volume is the binding limit, which is answered by dividing the order tonnage by the permitted payload and the order cube by the internal volume and comparing the two ratios. Where the weight ratio is the higher of the two, floor loading gains the most; where the volume ratio is higher and the cartons are weak, palletizing is the safer purchase even though it looks more expensive per cubic metre.

A mixed shipment is normal and does not need to be uniform. Pallets are usually loaded toward the door end where the heaviest and most regular units go, with floor-loaded cartons filling the nose, and the two blocks separated by a plywood or plastic bulkhead rather than left to press against each other. What must not happen is a partial pallet at the top of a stack or an isolated pallet in the middle of a floor-loaded block, because both create a void that moves.

Where Loading Breakage Happens, and What Cushioning Prevents It

Breakage at and after loading is rarely random, and the useful question is not how to make the operation gentler in general but which of the known causes is present in a given shipment. Five locations account for most of it, and all five are visible in a loading photo taken at the right moment.

The first is the bottom corner of the block. Every carton or pallet placed on an uneven container floor, on a nail head, on a splinter of the plywood floor or on a piece of dunnage that has shifted, transfers its entire load through one crushed corner, and the damage then propagates up the column above it. The floor should be swept and inspected before the first unit goes in, and any protrusion should be covered rather than hammered flat. The second is the pressure point where the load meets the container wall. A pallet or carton that is pushed hard against a corrugated side wall is clamped between two rigid surfaces throughout the voyage, and the bottles nearest that wall take the load; the fix is a paper or foam pad on the contact face, not a tighter push.

The third is the void. Any gap left between the end of the load and the container doors, or between the last pallet and the side wall, will be filled within the first hours of the voyage by the load itself moving into it, and the resulting impact is what breaks bottles at the far end. Voids are the single most common cause of arrival damage and the single easiest to eliminate, because a gap is visible before the doors are closed. The fourth is the door end, which is where unloading begins and where the first unit out is often pulled rather than lifted, tipping the stack beside it; the load should be braced against the doors, not left to lean on them. The fifth is the top of a floor-loaded block, where the last few rows are placed by a person reaching upward and are rarely as tight as the rows below, so the top layer of a tall hand-built block is systematically the loosest part of the shipment and benefits from a plywood cap or a layer of corrugated laid flat across it.

Cushioning is the answer to all five, and the materials are ordinary. Layer pads and corrugated sheets separate glass from glass and spread a point load across a face. Foam or paper edge protectors take the contact with a container wall. Dunnage boards or empty pallets fill a gap too large for a pad. Stretch film and banding unitize what would otherwise move independently. The principle to hold on to is that a cushion does not stop the load from moving; it decides how the load stops, by spreading the contact over an area rather than concentrating it on an edge.

Blocking and Bracing Inside the Box, and Wood Packaging Rules at Destination

Blocking and bracing is what makes a loading plan real, and it is the part most often left to whoever happens to be at the dock. Four methods cover almost every glass shipment, and they are usually combined rather than chosen between.

Airbags, also called dunnage bags, are inflatable cushions placed in the gaps between pallets or between the load and the container wall, then inflated until they press against both faces. They are fast, they weigh almost nothing, and they are the standard answer to a lengthwise gap in a palletized load. They have two limits: they protect against movement into a void, not against a load that is already leaning, and a bag placed against a sharp edge will puncture, so a protective board belongs between the bag and the corner of the load. Timber blocking, meaning wooden beams or battens nailed or wedged across the container floor and against the load, is the older and heavier method. It is used where the load is very heavy, where an airbag would have to be unreasonably large, or where a shipping line or insurer expects a physical stop rather than a cushion. Nails into a container floor are permitted in most trades but the number and position are governed by the carrier, and a container can be rejected for excessive nailing.

Lashing and strapping, using webbing or steel bands taken from the load to lashing points or across the load, holds a stack down against vertical movement and against tipping. In a palletized glass load the banding is usually taken over the top of the load and down to the pallet rather than to the container, so that the unit stays intact if it does shift. Plywood or plastic bulkheads, meaning a sheet fixed across the container to separate two different blocks or to close the nose end, are the answer to a mixed shipment, and they also stop a floor-loaded block from spreading into the pallet behind it. The condition to check on all four is the same: bracing must bear on the strongest part of the unit, which for a cased bottle is the carton panel and not a single bottle neck.

Wood is not only an engineering material, it is also a regulated one. Solid wood packaging, including pallets, crates, dunnage and blocking timber that travels with the goods, is subject to phytosanitary rules in most importing countries, and the widely applied benchmark is the ISPM 15 scheme, under which the wood is heat treated or fumigated and then marked with the approved stamp. The mark has to be legible on the wood that actually ships, and it has to be verifiable at the loading point rather than assumed from a supplier’s statement. Processed wood products such as plywood and fibreboard are generally outside the solid wood requirement, which is one practical reason plywood is used for bulkheads. Buyers with strict programmes in the United States, the European Union, Australia and New Zealand should write the wood packaging requirement into the purchase order alongside the carton spec, and should ask for the treatment mark to appear in the loading photos. Whether a particular destination accepts a particular mark, and what its own national rules require beyond the international scheme, is a customs question that should be confirmed against the destination’s current regulation rather than taken from a general summary.

Condensation, Labels and Container Climate

A steel container crossing several climate zones behaves as a poorly insulated box, and glass shipments are affected by that in ways that are easy to overlook. Warm humid air loaded at a plant in a hot season, followed by night-time cooling at sea, produces condensation on the inside of the container roof and walls. The water then drips onto the top of the load, and where the load is wrapped in stretch film the moisture can be held against the surface rather than evaporating. The consequences that matter commercially are not usually the glass itself, which is unaffected, but the label and the carton. An unprotected paper label that takes up moisture can lift at the edge, wrinkle or lose adhesion, and a carton that takes up moisture loses compression strength, which matters most in a floor-loaded block where the bottom cartons are carrying everything above them.

Three measures reduce the risk and none of them is a guarantee. A desiccant, usually in sachets or a blanket placed on top of the load, absorbs moisture from the air inside the container. Ventilation, where the container allows it, lets humid air escape rather than condense. A moisture barrier, such as a liner or a heavy kraft sheet over the top of the load, keeps the drip off the goods. Whether any of them is worth buying depends on the route and the season, and the practical approach is to ask the question at booking rather than after the shipment has sailed: on this lane, at this time of year, does the forwarder recommend a liner or a desiccant, and has that recommendation been made for a similar glass or packaged-goods shipment.

Label adhesion is worth raising early because it is decided at the labelling station, not in the container. A label applied over a cool or dusty surface, or over a decorative surface treatment, will behave worse under moisture than one applied to a clean, dry bottle, and a supplier asked to guarantee label performance after a sea voyage is being asked to guarantee something the labelling process mostly determines. The realistic wording in a specification is that labels should be applied to a clean and dry surface, that the label stock should be suitable for a humid route, and that the destination should inspect label condition as part of the receiving check.

Trade Terms: Where the Risk Sits When the Doors Close

The trade term does not change how a container is loaded, but it decides who pays for the loading, who owns the risk once the doors are shut, and who is entitled to give loading instructions. That is why the term belongs in a page about loading at all, and why it belongs in the purchase order rather than in a later conversation.

Under EXW the buyer takes the goods at the supplier’s premises, so the loading operation, the pallet supply, the inland haulage and the container itself are on the buyer’s side of the account from the start. The buyer is also the party who must give the loading instruction, which means the loading plan drawings and the loading photos have to be requested from the supplier as a service rather than assumed as part of the delivery. Under FOB the seller delivers the goods on board the vessel and the risk passes at that point, so the loading at the origin port is arranged on the seller’s side and the buyer’s exposure begins once the container is on the ship. FOB is the term under which loading quality is most often disputed, because the buyer first sees the inside of the container when the doors are opened at destination, by which time any bracing that shifted cannot be examined in place. That is the practical argument for agreeing in the contract that loading photos are sent before departure.

Under CIF and CIP the seller arranges and pays the carriage, and the point to check is what the named destination actually covers. Carriage to the port of destination does not include unloading at the buyer’s plant, and it does not always include the destination terminal handling or the inland leg, so a term that looks complete can still leave the buyer paying for the last stage. It also does not transfer the risk of a badly loaded container away from the party who loaded it; the term allocates cost, not fault. Under DDP the delivery obligation reaches the buyer’s premises, so unloading at destination, the return or disposal of pallets and the handling of any damage found on arrival all become part of what was bought, and the delivery point and the equipment available there should be written into the contract rather than settled on the day.

Whichever term applies, three items should be written into the order rather than agreed verbally: who provides and pays for the pallets and the bracing materials, whether loading photos and a loading report are provided before departure, and which party bears the cost of damage found at destination that is attributable to the loading. None of those three is settled by the trade term alone, and all three are cheap to agree in advance and expensive to argue afterwards.

What Container Loading Costs, Item by Item

Loading cost is usually discussed as a freight rate, which hides most of it. Six items belong in the comparison, and all six should be expressed per unit loaded rather than per shipment, so that two loading modes can be compared on the same basis and the effect of a change in the packing spec can be seen.

The first is the bracing and consumables: airbags, timber, plywood bulkheads, strapping, edge protectors, corner boards, desiccant and container liners where used. These recur on every shipment and are frequently the item that makes floor loading look cheaper than it is, because a floor-loaded block of loose cartons often needs more bracing material than a palletized block, not less. The second is the pallet itself, whether bought as a one-way pallet with the shipment, rented through a pool, or provided as part of a returnable fleet, and the cost of the pallet has to be counted with the volume it consumes rather than separately. The third is the labour at origin, counted in person-hours for the stuffing operation including the placement, the bracing and the tidying of the container before loading, not only the time spent moving the units.

The fourth is the freight difference between the container types, and this is where the arithmetic is most often done badly. A 40HQ costs more than a 40GP and a 40GP more than a 20GP as a rate, but the comparison that matters is freight per unit loaded, and a 40HQ that gains a tier carries a third again as many units for a rate premium that is usually much smaller than a third. Conversely, an order that is weight-limited rather than volume-limited gains nothing from a bigger box, and paying a 40HQ rate for a load that would have reached the same tonnage in a 40GP is a straightforward loss. The comparison should be made on the binding limit, weight or volume, and not on the volume of the box. The fifth item is the number of containers: where an order splits across a second box because of a packing choice rather than because of volume, the entire second container’s cost is attributable to that choice, which is why a carton size decision can be worth more than a price negotiation. The sixth is the cost of damage and claim handling, valued at the landed cost of the broken bottles rather than their ex-works price, because a bottle broken in transit has already been packed, labelled, transported to the port and loaded before it broke.

One further item decides the outcome more often than any of the six. That is the container fill actually achieved, meaning the difference between the load the box was planned to carry and the load it actually carried. A plan that assumes a pallet count which the geometry cannot deliver, or a floor-loaded block built to a lower height than the cartons could support, shows up not as a line cost but as freight per unit that is quietly higher than it needed to be. Measuring the fill on one real shipment, and comparing it with the plan, is the cheapest audit available on a loading operation.

Where This Page Stops and Which Page Answers the Rest

This page has covered the loading of finished, already-packed goods into a container: what a loading plan has to fix, the container types and their standard internal dimensions, the comparison of container capacity by loading mode, the pallet format geometry that decides how many units fit, the choice between palletized and floor-loaded shipment, where breakage happens and what cushioning prevents it, blocking and bracing methods together with the destination wood packaging requirement, condensation and label risk, the trade terms that decide risk and cost at the door, and the cost items that belong in a loading comparison.

Several closely adjacent subjects are deliberately handled elsewhere, and the boundary is worth stating plainly so that no two pages compete for the same question. The form of the packaging itself, meaning whether the bottles travel in a carton, a shrink tray, a display box or a partitioned tray and how those secondary layers are chosen for a channel, is a packaging question and is not repeated here; this page begins where that decision ends and treats only what happens between a finished package and a closed container door. The written document that records the packaging requirement for an order is handled by the packing specification page, and the pure volume and cube arithmetic behind a container choice is handled by the CBM guide; both are named in the opening block above. The stacking station that builds a pallet before it reaches the container door is a machine and pattern decision covered on the glass bottle palletizer page, and the crate formats and the return and cleaning loop for reusable units are covered on the returnable bottle crates page. Buyers who are at the beginning of this chain rather than the end, and want the overall picture of how export orders are supported from quotation through documentation to loading, will find the wider framework on the glass bottle export support hub. This page keeps to the container itself.

Questions Buyers Ask About Loading Glass Bottles in Containers

Should I ship glass bottles palletized or floor loaded?

It follows from three conditions rather than from a preference. Floor loading makes sense when the cartons are strong enough to carry the full stacking load, when the destination has the labour to unload by hand, and when the order is weight-limited rather than volume-limited, which is common for filled bottles over about 750 ml. It recovers the height the pallet deck consumes and the width the pallet gaps waste, and on a heavy shipment that saving can move an order from two containers to one. Palletizing is the better answer when the destination has a dock and a forklift, when the order repeats, when the cartons are light or likely to soften in a humid voyage, and when a countable unit at the receiving end is worth more than the space the pallet costs. Mixed shipments with both modes in one box are normal, provided the two blocks are separated by a bulkhead rather than left to press against each other.

Which pallet format fits a container width best?

None of the common formats fills it, and the geometry is the reason. The internal width of the standard box is about 2,352 mm, and a 1,200 mm pallet cannot be placed twice across it because 2,400 mm exceeds the width available. The three formats therefore behave differently. A 1,200 by 1,000 mm pallet is normally placed with the 1,000 mm side across the width, so two pallets use about 2,000 mm and leave roughly 350 mm of residual strip to brace. A 1,219 by 1,016 mm pallet, common in North American trade, uses 1,016 mm across the width and 1,219 mm along the length, so it fills less width and consumes more length per pallet. An 1,100 by 1,100 mm pallet uses 2,200 mm of the width and leaves the least residual, at the cost of more floor length per unit. Which one wins depends on the trade lane, the pallet supply available and whether the residual strip can be used for anything, and it should be confirmed against the actual container rather than assumed from a standard drawing.

What is the difference between a 40GP and a 40HQ for a glass shipment?

Height, and only height. The two boxes share the same length and width, and the commonly cited reference difference is roughly 300 mm of internal height and a door opening of about 2,585 mm against 2,280 mm. That matters precisely to the extent that the extra clearance lets the finished unit gain a tier. A short palletized load that fits two tiers in a 40HQ but only one in a 40GP converts the higher rate into a materially better freight per unit. A load that is already at the 40GP door limit gains nothing from the extra height and pays a premium for length it already had. The same logic applies to floor-loaded blocks, where the extra height is worth taking only if the cartons can carry the additional stacking load without crushing the bottom layer.

How should a glass load be braced inside a container?

By combining four methods rather than choosing one. Airbags fill a lengthwise void quickly and cheaply and are the standard answer between pallets and between the load and the doors, with a board between the bag and any sharp corner. Timber blocking or wedging gives a physical stop where the load is heavy or where a carrier expects a hard constraint rather than a cushion. Strapping and lashing hold the stack down and stop it tipping, and in a palletized load the banding is usually taken to the pallet so that the unit stays intact if it shifts. Plywood or plastic bulkheads close the nose end and separate a mixed load into blocks. What all four have in common is that the bracing must bear on the strongest part of the unit, which is the carton panel, and that voids rather than weight are what actually break glass in transit. A load with no voids needs very little bracing; a load with a void will move into it whatever else is done.

What wood packaging rules apply to a glass bottle shipment?

Solid wood packaging that travels with the goods, including pallets, crates, dunnage and blocking timber, is regulated by most importing countries, and the widely applied benchmark is the ISPM 15 scheme, under which the wood is heat treated or fumigated and then marked with the approved stamp. The practical requirements are that the mark is legible on the wood that actually ships, that it can be verified at the loading point, and that it appears in the loading photos. Processed wood such as plywood and fibreboard is generally treated differently from solid wood, which is one reason plywood is common for bulkheads. National rules can go further than the international scheme, and some destinations have additional requirements of their own, so the current regulation of the destination should be confirmed rather than generalised from another market.

Does container condensation damage glass bottles in transit?

The glass itself is not affected, but the label and the carton are. A container loaded in a warm humid season and then cooled at sea condenses water on its internal roof and walls, and that water drips onto the top of the load. Where the load is wrapped in stretch film, the moisture can be held against the surface instead of evaporating. A paper label that takes up moisture may lift at the edge or wrinkle, and a carton that takes up moisture loses compression strength, which matters most in a floor-loaded block where the bottom cartons carry everything above them. Desiccants, ventilation where the box allows it, and a liner or heavy kraft sheet over the top of the load each reduce the risk, and none is a guarantee. The right moment to decide whether to buy any of them is at booking, by asking the forwarder what it recommends for that specific lane in that season.

What documents should I ask for to verify how the container was loaded?

Two. A stowage or loading plan, which is a plan view of the container floor showing which unit goes where, how many rows, whether any unit is turned, and where the blocking and bracing sits, so that the plan can be compared with what arrives. And a loading report with date-stamped photos taken at the point of stuffing, showing the empty and swept container floor, the partly built load, the completed load before bracing, the bracing itself, and the closed doors with the seal number visible. For a first order, or any order where a claim is conceivable, those two documents are worth more than a verbal assurance, because they show what was done rather than what was intended. They should be named in the purchase order, since a supplier who is not asked will normally not produce them, and under a term such as FOB the buyer otherwise sees the inside of the container for the first time at destination, when nothing can be examined in place.

How do I work out how many containers an order needs?

Compute both limits and take the one that binds. Divide the total order weight by the permitted payload of the container type and divide the total order volume by its internal volume, and the higher of the two ratios is the number of boxes the order needs. On filled glass the weight ratio is usually the higher, which is why a dense order can reach its tonnage in a 20GP that is less than half full, and why an empty bottle order with the same cubic volume can need fewer containers than its weight would suggest. The pallet or carton envelope then has to be checked against the container floor separately, because a count that works by volume may still not fit by geometry once the pallet format and the residual strip are taken into account. The volume side of that calculation is set out on the container loading and CBM guide, and the floor geometry is the subject of the section above.

Send the Annual Volume, the Bottle Weight and the Destination Port

To get a loading recommendation that can be priced, send three things. The product, meaning the bottle type, the filled and empty weight of a single bottle, the carton specification with its dimensions and the number of bottles in it, and the pallet format and finished load height if the shipment is palletized. The volume, meaning the annual quantity and the size of a typical order, expressed in bottles or in cartons rather than in containers, so that the split across shipments can be seen. And the destination, meaning the port or door address, the trade term, whether the receiver has a dock and a forklift, and whether any import rules on wood packaging or moisture protection apply at that market.

With those in hand, the reply can set out a loading mode with the reasoning behind it, a container type and an indicative count per container with the binding limit identified, the pallet format that suits the container width on that lane, the bracing method and the consumables it requires, the wood packaging requirement that applies at destination, and a cost comparison expressed per unit loaded rather than per container, so that the loading decision and the packing decision can be evaluated on the same sheet. Every figure in that reply is an estimate for planning and is subject to confirmation once the actual box and the actual packing are measured, which is the point at which a loading plan becomes a loading report.