Frequently Asked Questions

Containers arrive on a tilt-bed truck, which slides the container off the back. That means the truck needs a straight, level run at the drop point:

• 20ft container: about 70 feet of straight clearance from the drop point
• 40ft container: about 100 feet of straight clearance from the drop point

It also needs roughly 10 to 12 ft of width and clear air above. Low utility lines, tree limbs and roof overhangs stop a delivery more often than anything on the ground does. If you are unsure, describe the approach when you ask for a quote and we will tell you before anything is scheduled.

Watch a delivery: container delivery video.

Price moves with three things: the size, the grade, and how far your address sits from the depot holding the unit. That last one is why we do not publish a single statewide number. The starting prices on this site name the grade and the city they were captured in, so you can see the floor rather than a marketing figure. For your address, the quote form or a phone call gets you a real number, delivery included.

Warranty runs by grade: one-trip units carry a 10 year structural and no-leak warranty, cargo worthy and wind and water tight units carry 5 years, and economy units carry a 1 year no-roof-leak warranty. The warranty travels with the grade you buy, so if warranty length matters to you it is worth comparing grades before you compare prices.

Yes. We sell containers outright, and we work with financing partners who offer rent-to-own, which spreads the payments and leaves you owning the container at the end. We do not do short-term rentals. If you want the full comparison, our rent vs buy guide walks through when each path makes sense.

South Carolina pricing starts at $2,078 for a 20ft Wind and Water Tight container delivered in Charleston, captured from Container One on 6 August 2026. The same 20ft Wind and Water Tight unit is $2,097 delivered in Columbia and $2,559 delivered in Greenville. Price moves with size, grade, what is in stock and how far the truck runs, so the number that matters is the one quoted to your ZIP code. Delivery is included in every figure above.

Because haul distance is only one input in a delivered price, and it is usually not the biggest one. Charleston is served from the Savannah depot, about 109 miles down the coast. Greenville is served from the Charlotte depot, about 120 miles up Interstate 85. Eleven miles apart in haul, and on a 20ft Wind and Water Tight container Greenville runs roughly four hundred eighty dollars more. What is behind each depot explains it. Savannah is a port, so containers come ashore there before they are repositioned anywhere inland. Charlotte is an inland yard, and every box in it arrived on a truck or a train first. Greenville does hold real advantages on availability, so price and stock are separate questions worth asking separately.

South Carolina splits this into two questions answered by two different offices, and the people who run into trouble usually answered one and skipped the other. The building code is settled statewide: Section 6-9-50 of the South Carolina Code names the mandatory codes, the Building Codes Council adopts the editions, and local governments enforce that set rather than writing their own. Zoning, which decides whether a container is an allowed thing on your particular lot, is entirely local and the answers genuinely differ. Charleston treats a container in a residential district as a portable storage unit with a size and duration limit, and restricts outdoor storage of three or more containers to the LI and HI industrial districts. Columbia handles it as a temporary use with a thirty day clock and a construction site exception. Greenville permits containers for outdoor storage only in its BH, IX and IG districts. One call to whoever issues your permit, with your parcel address, settles nearly all of it.

This is the most useful question on any South Carolina container page, because a great many mailing addresses in this state are not inside the city they name. The City of Charleston spans three counties, with Daniel Island and Cainhoy in Berkeley County and part of the West Ashley corridor in Dorchester County, while Mount Pleasant, North Charleston, Summerville, Goose Creek and each island town are separate jurisdictions. Around Greenville, Taylors, Berea, Wade Hampton, Five Forks, Welcome, Parker and Gantt are unincorporated county, and Greer, Simpsonville, Mauldin, Fountain Inn and Travelers Rest are their own municipalities. Your property tax bill names the jurisdiction that has your address, and that is the office to call first. In all three metros the county rulebook gives a container more room than the city rulebook does.

Firm, level bearing at the four corner castings, because that is where the entire weight goes. A container is not a shed on a slab, it is four point loads, and South Carolina gives you four genuinely different soils to put them on. Upstate red clay holds water and softens when saturated, and a great deal of that market sits on slope, so blocking on the downhill corners keeps the doors swinging true. Sandhills and Midlands sand drains beautifully and can still spread under a point load. Lowcountry ground is sand over a high water table, and at the marsh edge it is pluff mud, so a box set straight onto turf will settle unevenly within a season. Pressure treated timbers, concrete blocks or a compacted gravel pad under each corner solves all four cases, and grading so water runs away from the corners rather than under them does the rest.

Typically 1 to 2 weeks for the Lowcountry, the Midlands, the Upstate and the Olde English District, and 2 to 3 weeks for the CSRA and Old 96 District, the Pee Dee, the Grand Strand and remote rural sites. South Carolina is served from three depots and none of them sits in the middle of the state, which is what actually sets those windows. Charleston draws from Savannah, Columbia draws from Charleston and Greenville draws from Charlotte, so the corners of the state farthest from all three are the two longer hauls. On the Grand Strand from Memorial Day through Labor Day we set early morning windows, because US 501 and the US 17 Bypass do not work in the middle of a summer Saturday.

Four grades, four warranties, and the grade decides both what the box looks like and what it is warranted for. One-trip containers are near new, having made a single loaded voyage, and carry a 10 year structural and no-leak warranty. Cargo worthy containers are certified fit for ocean shipping and carry a 5 year warranty. Wind and water tight containers are retired from shipping but still dry inside, and carry a 5 year warranty. Economy containers are the working grade with cosmetic age on them, and carry a 1 year warranty covering roof leaks only. For dry storage on a South Carolina site, wind and water tight is the grade most people buy. One-trip is what you choose when the box will be visible, painted or converted.

Corten steel forms a stable surface layer that slows corrosion, and these boxes spend their working lives crossing oceans in salt spray on an open deck. The real South Carolina problem is not rust on the outside, it is condensation on the inside. The State Climatology Office notes that humidity here peaks around sunrise, which is exactly when a steel roof that has radiated heat to a clear sky is at its coldest. Warm wet air meeting cold steel is why containers sweat. Ventilation, a level set on blocks and separation from the ground handle most of it. On the coast and the sea islands, add a yearly rinse and touch up paint wherever the finish gets thin, and check the roof seams and door gaskets when the truck arrives.

Yes, and rural South Carolina is usually the easy part of the map. Fields, pack houses, equipment yards and timber tracts have room to work, and most placements are a straight pull off a county road. The question we ask is what the last quarter mile is made of. Sandhills sugar sand and sandy Pee Dee loam carry a pickup all summer and can soften under a loaded rig after a wet week, so we want to know whether it is sand, clay or gravel and whether a tractor is nearby. In the Upstate foothills the question changes to grade and width, because a tilt bed truck cannot back a 40ft container up a switchback it cannot see over. Two 20ft containers often solve a site outright that will never take a 40ft.

Yes. There are three ways to hold a container and they suit different lengths of need. Renting is the right answer for a short, defined project, because you hand it back when you are done. Buying is the right answer when the need runs long, because a container is a durable steel asset rather than a consumable and you can sell it later. Rent-to-own sits between the two: the monthly payment builds toward ownership instead of ending when the box goes back. Ask for all three numbers on the same call, divide the delivered purchase price by the monthly rental figure, and the month count that falls out is your crossover point.

• One-trip: made one loaded ocean crossing. Clean floors, intact paint, close to new.
• Cargo worthy: certified fit to carry cargo at sea. Structurally sound, cosmetically used.
• Wind and water tight (WWT): inspected to confirm the doors seal, there are no holes, and the interior stays dry. Surface rust, paint wear and minor dents are normal.
• Economy: the lowest grade we sell. Weathered, and priced accordingly.

For a grade-by-grade walkthrough with photographs, see the container condition guide.

It depends on what the container is for. If it is going to be seen, lived in, or converted, the clean interior and intact paint save real work later and the 10 year structural and no-leak warranty is the longest we carry. If it is going behind a shed to hold equipment, a wind and water tight unit does the same job for less.

We offer 20ft standard, 40ft standard and 40ft high cube containers, plus modified containers and refrigerated units in 20ft and 40ft.

Personnel doors, roll-up doors, windows, vents, skylights, electrical wiring and a panel, LED lighting, insulation, spray foam, HVAC, shelving, workbenches and exterior paint. Which of those matter depends on the climate the box will sit in: South Carolina is cooling led everywhere, and unusually for a state that runs from barrier islands to the Blue Ridge escarpment, the energy code puts all 46 counties in the same climate zone. Twelve coastal plain counties carry the code's warm-humid designation, which is the table quietly saying the moisture problem is more aggressive down there even though the R-values do not change. What that single zone hides is three real climates. The Lowcountry is warm and wet with vapor driving inward most of the year. The Midlands and the Sandhills run hotter than the coast in high summer because there is no sea breeze, with big day to night swings that cool a roof hard overnight. The Upstate has real winter nights and occasional ice. What does not change anywhere is that moisture governs, so the insulation plan is a moisture plan first and an R-value plan second..

A reefer has a refrigeration unit built into one end. It runs on a 460V 3-phase supply, or a compatible generator where 3-phase power is not available, and holds anywhere from -25 degrees F to +70 degrees F. The walls are insulated as part of the original build, not retrofitted.

Start with the ground you actually have. In South Carolina, Four corner castings carrying the entire load onto four genuinely different soils. South Carolina Department of Natural Resources describes four physiographic regions, and a container meets each of them differently than a house does, because a house spreads its weight along a continuous footing and a container puts all of it through four points. The Piedmont, roughly a third of the state and most of the Upstate market, is deep red Cecil and Appling clay that holds water and softens when saturated, with high shrink-swell Iredell soils mixed through the same ground. The Sandhills belt is sandy over eolian sand, where drainage is rarely the issue and bearing sometimes is, because loose sand under a point load wants to spread. The coastal plain, half the state, runs from well drained sandy soils to poorly drained ones with a high water table, and at the marsh edge it turns to soft tidal deposits. Slope compounds all of it, and a great deal of the Greenville and Spartanburg market is on slope.

For temporary placement: Set the container on solid bearing at the four corner castings rather than straight onto turf. Pressure treated timbers, concrete blocks or a compacted gravel pad under each corner keeps the box level, keeps the doors square and keeps the wood floor out of standing water. Grade so surface water runs away from the corners rather than under them. On the coast that single step is the difference between doors that swing true for years and doors that bind within a season.

For permanent placement or a conversion: Poured piers or footings under each corner casting, bearing on undisturbed soil, sized for the load rather than dropped on as a block. IRC Section R403.1.4 requires exterior footings at least 12 inches below the undisturbed ground surface, and below the frost line where one applies. On Piedmont clay, loose Sandhills sand or coastal deposits a soil test is cheap next to remediating a settled corner, and any structural build needs the foundation and the anchoring designed by a South Carolina licensed engineer. Expect a Lowcountry reviewer to look hard at the connection between container and foundation, because the sandy coastal plain liquefied in places in 1886 and that is exactly the failure mode that matters to a structure carrying its whole weight on four points.

Frost depth: Shallow throughout South Carolina, and rarely the governing factor. The IRC minimum of 12 inches below undisturbed grade is the practical floor. There is no single statewide figure to look up, because Table R301.2 is filled in locally, so ask your building department for their number. Anything meant to be permanent needs its bearing points below that line, or the whole assembly moves with the first hard freeze.

Slab on grade and shallow crawl space construction are the South Carolina norm, because frost depths here are shallow and the frost line is rarely the governing factor. What governs instead is water and slope: where the water goes, how fast the soil sheds it, whether the ground under the corners stays firm through a wet week, and on the sea islands what the flood mapping says your finished floor elevation has to be.

At a minimum, make the placement area level and firm, and clear debris, rocks and brush out of the way. Confirm the straight run above, and look up for lines and limbs. Soft ground is the single most common cause of a delayed delivery: a loaded flatbed will sink, so a driver will wait for the ground to dry rather than tear up your property. Send photos of the site with your quote request and we will tell you if anything needs doing first.

The box itself is 14-gauge Corten steel and is very hard to cut. The lock is the weak point, so use a hidden shackle lock, sometimes called a puck lock, inside a lockbox welded over the handle. Many of our units already have a lockbox fitted.

The recurring signs are a price far under the market, a seller who will not let the container be seen or photographed, payment demanded by wire transfer or crypto, no physical business address, and pressure to decide today. A real dealer will give you a phone number, answer questions before payment, and put the quote in writing.