Efficient transportation of coal has significance for ensuring global energy supply. The coal terminal is a key node of the coal transportation network, and its operation capacity directly affects the overall efficiency of coal supply chain. Considering the ever-increasing size of ships and coal trade volume, how to configure cargo handling equipment of the coal terminal to satisfy the operational demand, avoid resource redundancy, and improve the terminal throughput capacity is an important problem in coal terminal constructions. Therefore, this study proposes an equipment configuration optimization model for coal terminal loading/unloading systems to minimize the total cost of the system. A simulation-based solution algorithm is developed to optimize the terminal equipment configuration scheme. Experiments are conducted based on an actual coal terminal. The results show that the total system cost of the optimized scheme has been reduced by 8.14% compared with the original scheme. The results indicate that the proposed method is effective in solving the cargo handling equipment in coal terminals.