Today the container traffic trend is such as to accumulate the boxes at a relay terminal and which are distributed later on . The specialized container vessels have become larger and more sophisticated , while the cost of building a modern container terminal is very high . So the practice have become to unload the full vessel at a well equipped modern port and then distributed to the same region ports using feeder vessels .In order to correctly accommodate the forecast to these developments the planner will have to make detailed discussion with various prominent operating shipping lines . Even the shipping lines changes their policies suddenly from calling there mother vessels at all ports to introducing a feeder service by using a relay port . So modern container terminal planner has a tough and complicated task before him to foresee all such developments and to plane a terminal which will not be underutilized and also not having less facilities .The equipment factor is discussed in detail in the section - container handling systems. In this context we discuss briefly how the equipment factors affects area requirement of the terminal .The four main types of equipments are discussed under container handling systems . Major area related factors of the equipments are staking capability and spaces needed for operating the equipments .In yard gantry system , the presence of vehicles within the operating areas does not increase the risk of accidents and so a well planned traffic flow patterns , strictly adhered to , is essential to reduce those risk to the minimum .Land area utilization is optimum with yard gantry crane system . Next to this stands the straddle carrier system . In case of other two systems , viz . Tractor Trailer System and Front End Loader System , the area utilization is very poor . So Planner must consider this facts while planning .