Container

Special box designed to carry freight and constituting a type of ITU. It is strengthened and stackable, allowing both horizontal and vertical transfers. A more formal technical definition of a container is: article of transport equipment that is: a) of a permanent character and accordingly strong enough to be suitable for repeated use; b) specially designed to facilitate the carriage of goods, by one or more modes of transport, without intermediate reloading; c) fitted with devices permitting its ready handling, particularly its transfer from one mode of transport to another; d) so designed as to be easy to fill and empty; e) stackable; and f) having an internal volume of one cubic metre or more. Swap bodies are excluded. Although without internal volume, and therefore not satisfying criterion (f) above, flat containers (see G.II-10) used in maritime transport should be regarded as a special type of container and therefore are included here.