13% of South Carolina Dumpster Companies Are Ghost Listings. Here's the Data.

13% of South Carolina Dumpster Companies Are Ghost Listings. Here's the Data.

Updated October 2026. We rechecked this post against our data and removed claims it didn't support, including that ghost listings here shared phone numbers. Where listings do share a phone number in our data, they are branches of the same company. The figures below are unchanged.

We scored every dumpster rental operator in America.

All of them. 6,304 companies. 50 states. Real Google data, real reviews, real scores.

After [Arizona](/blog/arizona-dumpster-rental-ghost-listings-investigation), [New York](/blog/new-york-dumpster-rental-ghost-listings-investigation), and [Alabama](/blog/alabama-dumpster-rental-ghost-listings-investigation), we turned the lens on South Carolina. It's the 4th-worst state in the country for ghost listings — and nobody's talking about it.

The South Carolina Ghost Listing Problem

Here's the headline number: 13.5% of South Carolina dumpster rental companies have zero Google reviews or no rating at all.

The national average? 9.5%.

South Carolina has 42% more ghost listings than the rest of the country — the 4th-worst rate in America.

A "ghost listing" is a business listed on Google Maps with zero reviews and no star rating. It might be a brand-new company. It might be a lead-generation page that passes your call to whoever will take the job. From the listing alone, you can't tell which.

That's the problem: you call the number, someone quotes you a price, and you have no history to judge them by.

What the Data Shows in South Carolina

Empty listings are spread thin. No South Carolina city has more than two. North Charleston has 2 of 16, and Charleston, Greenville and Lexington have one each. Much of the rest is in small towns with only one or two listings.

They don't look like a network. None of South Carolina's 14 empty listings matched the shared-website, hidden-character or templated-name patterns we found elsewhere. 12 of the 14 have a website.

Low ratings matter more. 7 South Carolina listings (6.7%) average under 3 stars, above the national 4.3%. The worst-rated with real review volume: WM's Columbia hauling listing in Gaston (2.1 stars, 396 reviews), Coastal Waste & Recycling in Ridgeland (2.3, 144) and Capital Waste Services in North Charleston (2.9, 128).

The DCS Score: How We Measure Real Operators

We built the Dumpster Comparison Score (DCS) to cut through the noise. It's a 100-point rubric based entirely on public data. Five components:

Tiers:

• 85-100: Elite
• 70-84: Exceptional
• 55-69: Highly Recommended
• 40-54: Good
• Below 40: Listed

No payola. No "featured" operators buying their way up. Every operator is scored the exact same way with the exact same public data.

Here's how South Carolina looks under the DCS Score:

15.4% of South Carolina's dumpster rental operators score below 40. That's the "avoid unless you have no other choice" tier. Most of the 14 ghost listings live inside it.

But here's the good news — and it's genuinely good news: 15 operators in South Carolina score in the Elite tier. That's 14.4% of the state, which is actually a higher Elite concentration than Arizona (10.6%), Alabama (9.2%), or New York (8.6%). South Carolina's top end is strong. The problem is the bottom end dragging the overall numbers down.

The 15 Elite South Carolina Dumpster Rental Operators

These are the only 15 companies in South Carolina that score in the Elite tier (85+ DCS). Ranked by DCS Score, then by review volume. Every single one has been independently scored on public data — none paid to be here.

A few things stand out:

• The Charleston metro has 4 Elite operators — the strongest concentration in the state, anchored by 1-800-GOT-JUNK?'s 1,803 reviews (the single biggest review corpus in all of South Carolina dumpster rental).
• Columbia has 4 Elite operators including Junk King Columbia SC, Big Red Box, College Hunks, and VETS Junk Removal.
• Greenville has 2 Elite operators — Bin There Dump That and VaVia, both franchise models with strong local execution.
• The coastal corridor (Myrtle Beach, Conway, Hilton Head) has 3 Elite operators — Better Bins, Drag N Drop, and VaVia Hilton Head.
• Junk King Rock Hill at DCS 100 is the highest-scoring dumpster rental operator in South Carolina. Based in Indian Land (Charlotte metro spillover), 940 reviews at 4.9 stars.

The Charleston Metro

The Charleston metro is the largest dumpster rental market in South Carolina: 26 listings across Charleston, North Charleston, Summerville, Ladson and Mount Pleasant. 8 of them score in the Listed tier (below 40 DCS), and 4 have no reviews or no rating at all.

Four empty listings in a 26-listing metro isn't a crisis. It does mean roughly one call in six from a Charleston search reaches a company with no public track record. Start with companies that have one.

If you're booking a dumpster in the Charleston metro, use the top-10 list we published separately: [The 10 Best Dumpster Rental Companies in Charleston](/blog/best-dumpster-rental-charleston-south-carolina).

How to Check a South Carolina Listing Before You Call

1. Never hire a company with fewer than 10 Google reviews. 10 isn't even a high bar — it's the absolute minimum. If a company has been operating for real, somebody has left them a review.

2. Check the review dates. 100 reviews in a single week = bot farm. Real businesses accumulate reviews gradually.

3. Click through to the website. If a "local" company's website is a generic national page, or the same site turns up behind other company names, you're probably calling a broker, not the hauler.

4. Get the weight limit in writing. Every legitimate SC operator will give you the weight allowance in your quote. Ghost operators say "don't worry about it" and then hit you with a $150 overage fee.

5. Ask about SC landfill fees. South Carolina's tipping fees vary by county, and the Charleston metro's rates are among the highest in the state. An honest operator will know the number. A ghost operator will dodge the question.

6. Use the DCS Score. We already did the math. If a company scores below 40, skip it. If it scores 85+, you're in the Elite tier — book with confidence.

What's Next

We're working through every state. So far Arizona (26.3%), New York (15.4%), Alabama (14.2%), and South Carolina (13.5%) are the worst ghost-listing rates. Nevada and California are close behind. Next up: the 10 best dumpster rental operators in Charleston and Columbia.

The DCS Score is independent, transparent, and free to use. We don't take money from operators to move them up. If a company is in the Elite tier, it's because the public data says so.

Want to see your city? [Browse the full South Carolina operator directory](/dumpster-rental/south-carolina) or [compare the top operators in Charleston side-by-side](/dumpster-rental/south-carolina/charleston).

Methodology

• Data source: Google Places API, pulled April 2026, across 50 US states and 200 metros.
• Universe: 6,304 unique operators with at least one business detail field populated (name, phone, or address).
• Ghost listing definition: A Google Maps business listing with either (a) zero reviews, or (b) no star rating, OR (c) both.
• DCS Score: Our proprietary 100-point rubric. Full methodology on our [scoring page](/methodology).
• Independence: No operator has paid for placement in this report. No operator can pay to improve their DCS Score — it's calculated from public data only.

Data last updated April 2026. Operator counts and ratings change over time; we re-score monthly. If your company appears in this report and you believe your DCS Score is inaccurate, contact us with corrected data.