by Guest » Mon Apr 04, 2005 6:35 pm
I had no idea what it was until another poster's question contained a bit of a hint it was about shipping. That gave me some terms to Google.
It stands for cubic meters and is used by the shipping industry. It can apply to individual boxes, pallets or standardized shipping containers (those things loaded on container ships). It is a nonstandard abrreviation, and not correct SI usage, which would be m³, or m^3 in character sets that don't have superscripts. International shipping rates can be based on both volume and weight, or figured both ways and take the larger.
For a box, measure length, height, and width in meters (or move decimal to convert from centimeters), and multiply. You have "cbm."
For larger shipments of many boxes, just add the volumes together (also the weights)