A full container load is a shipment booked as an entire container, priced as a box rather than by weight or volume, with the shipper responsible for filling it and, usually, for stuffing and unstuffing. The category is commercial, not technical. It grew out of carrier pricing practice and describes how a booking is billed and handled, not a property of the cargo. So whether a carrier will take a booking as a full load, what minimum applies, and how demurrage, detention and free time attach all come from that carrier’s tariff and the trade lane rather than from any external rule. Two quotations described as full container load may cover quite different work; read the booking terms rather than the label.
Why this entry carries no source list. This lexicon cites an official primary source wherever one exists and says so plainly where none does. This term is market convention: it was coined by commercial practice, it is used by everyone in the trade, and no body defines it. Pointing at a carrier’s tariff, a bank’s product page or a trade association’s explainer would dress one participant’s usage as a general rule. The practical upshot runs through the paragraph above — where the word carries no fixed meaning, the contract has to supply one.