How Many Containers can a Container Ship Carry?

Container ships are the quiet giants of the ocean and they’re massive. The average one can carry around 10,000 containers, which is like loading 10,000 giant Lego bricks onto a ship the size of a skyscraper tipped on its side.

And that’s just the average. The biggest container ships today can carry over 24,000 containers, enough to hold more than 300 million pairs of shoes or enough bananas for every American to have 30.

If you stacked those containers end to end, they’d stretch for over 60 miles, roughly the distance of a road trip from San Francisco to Santa Cruz.

These ships don’t just float. They glide. Despite their size, they can cruise at 20–25 miles per hour, powered by engines as tall as a four-story building and burning through tons of fuel per day. One ship’s engine can produce 100,000 horsepower — that's like 1,000 car engines all working together.

Fun fact? The containers themselves are marvels of design. Each is built to exact standards so they can be loaded like puzzle pieces by towering cranes.