Container yard: how many ground slots, how much land?
Enter your port's or ICD's actual throughput and dwell time — the calculator returns ground slots, stacking area, rehandling moves and peak-hour equipment count, comparing three stacking heights.
What the model calculates, and what it doesn't
Ground slots (TGS) = TEU/year × dwell days ÷ 365 × peak factor ÷ (stack height × fill factor) — the standard yard planning formula. The fill factor leaves empty slots so there is room to rehandle containers.
Rehandling is not taken from a lookup table but from the yard simulation on the Container terminal & berths page: fill a block, retrieve containers in random order, and count how many times a container on top must be lifted off (min-max rule). This is an upper bound — a yard planned by vessel or by shipper has less rehandling.
Equipment = peak-hour moves (in + out + rehandling) ÷ (productivity × 85%). Area built from the yard block geometry, stated right below the results table.
Not calculated: reefer containers (power outlets), segregated dangerous-goods zones, higher stacking of empty containers, gates, truck waiting yards, CFS warehouses, main internal roads. Use for a preliminary brief; finalizing the master plan requires real cargo flow data.
Frequently asked questions
Is stacking higher always better?
No. Adding one more tier removes about 20% of ground slots, but each container retrieval requires more rehandling — from about 0.6 moves at 4 tiers to 0.7 at 5 tiers with random retrieval — so equipment moves increase. Where land is expensive, stack high; where land is cheap and volumes are large, stack low so equipment runs faster.
How does dwell time affect it?
Directly proportional: a 10-day dwell time needs twice as many ground slots as 5 days for the same throughput. Cutting dwell time (a short free-storage period, fast customs clearance) is usually cheaper than adding land.
RTG hay reach stacker?
Reach stackers have a low investment cost and are flexible, but need wide aisles and therefore consume land — about 50–55 m² per ground slot under the assumptions here. RTGs stack blocks of 6 rows tightly, at only about 32–35 m² per ground slot, suited to high-volume yards on limited land.
Have real project parameters? Send them to CGD and get feedback on the design scope
This simulation stops at the principle. For a specific project, CGD builds the model on real operating data and floor plan drawings.
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