Wooden cable reels in Arizona
We buy and sell empty wooden cable reels in Arizona, from Phoenix and Tucson contractor yards to mine and transmission sites out in the desert, with pickup and delivery arranged by the trailer. Send the flange, traverse and drum for each size and a count, and we come back with a price per reel and the freight it carries.
- Wire and cable plant listed
- Service Wire Co., Phoenix
- BEAD allocation
- $993,112,231.37
- Two utilities near-tied for first
- APS and Salt River Project
- Interstates
- I-10, I-17, I-40, I-8, I-19
Phoenix has a cable plant
Service Wire Co. runs a manufacturing and distribution center in Phoenix, one of the company's three nationwide, with the others in Culloden, West Virginia and Houston. Service Wire makes power, control and instrumentation cable and ships it on nailed wood reels. Its free reel return accepts only its own labeled nailed wood reels with 30 to 72 inch flanges, in full truckloads, with undamaged arbor holes and at least 75% of the stave boards intact.
Those terms are reasonable for a maker, and they leave a lot out. A contractor in Mesa with fifteen Service Wire reels, ten from another maker and a few with a split stave each has no full truckload of qualifying reels. That mixed pile is what this desk is for. We write it up by size, price each group and arrange one truck for the lot.
| Return program accepts | Left out, and a fit for this desk |
|---|---|
| Service Wire labeled reels only | Reels from any other maker |
| Nailed wood, 30 to 72 inch flanges | Smaller plywood reels and reels over 72 inches |
| Full truckloads | Part loads and mixed lots |
| Undamaged arbor hole | Reels with repairable flange or stave damage, priced as found |
| At least 75% of staves intact | Reels below that line that still carry cable |
APS, SRP and the Phoenix build-out
Arizona Public Service and Salt River Project sold almost exactly the same amount of power in 2024: 33,701,404 MWh and 33,577,274 MWh, by EIA's count. APS is investor-owned and covers much of the state outside Tucson; SRP is a public power district serving a large share of the Phoenix metro. Tucson Electric Power is third. Fourth is Morenci Water and Electric, the utility for the copper mining town of Morenci in Greenlee County, which says a good deal about how much power one large mine uses.
Phoenix's growth keeps both big utilities busy with new substations, feeders and underground service to subdivisions spreading west toward Buckeye and south toward Casa Grande. Data center campuses and chip plants in the metro add medium-voltage and building wire work on top. Every one of those jobs empties reels.
| Rank | Retailer | Type | Retail sales (MWh) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Arizona Public Service Co | Investor-owned | 33,701,404 |
| 2 | Salt River Project | Public | 33,577,274 |
| 3 | Tucson Electric Power Co | Investor-owned | 8,964,184 |
| 4 | Morenci Water and Electric | Investor-owned | 2,740,316 |
| 5 | UNS Electric, Inc | Investor-owned | 1,905,700 |
SunZia: 550 miles of HVDC into Arizona
The SunZia Transmission line is a plus or minus 525 kV HVDC line running more than 550 miles, built to carry 3,650 MW of New Mexico wind power into Arizona and on to the western grid, according to Pattern Energy. Overhead HVDC conductor is strung from reels at pulling sites spaced along the route, and a line that long leaves stringing yards on both sides of the state line.
Big conductor reels are often steel and returnable, and we don't trade steel reels. The wood reels from such a project, along with those from the substations and converter stations at each end, are what we look at. If you are closing a laydown yard on a transmission job, send the stencil sizes and a count before the reels are scrapped.
Heat, sun and monsoon: how desert storage treats a reel
Arizona is easy on reels in one way and hard in another. Dry air means little rot, so a reel stored for two years in Phoenix often has sounder staves than one stored a season on the Gulf Coast. Hard sun is the problem. Flanges facing the sun dry out, the plies check and split, and nails loosen as the wood shrinks. A reel whose outer ply has split from the rim to the arbor hole is no longer a carrier.
Monsoon season, roughly July through September, brings sudden storms and dust. Reels left lying flat in a low corner of a yard can sit in water for days after a big storm. Stand them on their flanges on higher ground, and if you can, turn them now and then so one flange doesn't take all the sun.
Desert freight on I-10, I-17 and I-40
I-10 runs from the California line through Phoenix and Tucson toward New Mexico. I-17 climbs from Phoenix to Flagstaff, where it meets I-40 crossing the north of the state. I-8 runs from Casa Grande to Yuma, and I-19 runs from Tucson to Nogales. Prysmian lists a location in Nogales, but its page does not say what the site is, so we don't count it as a plant.
Distances between Arizona towns are long. A full van from Phoenix to Tucson is a short run; a part load from a mine site near Morenci or a pull site on the Navajo Nation is not. For those we look for a buyer on the same road or a second lot in New Mexico to share the trailer, and we put that in writing when we quote.
Fiber in a state of long roads
NTIA allocated Arizona $993,112,231.37 for BEAD in June 2023, twentieth among the states. Unserved locations are spread across tribal lands, ranch country and small towns far from the two metros. Fiber crews working long rural routes use mid-size reels and need drums that meet the bend rule for fiber: at least 20 times the cable's outside diameter under NEMA WC 26, and never under 12 inches.
Clean, dry used reels are a good fit for that work, and Arizona's climate tends to produce them.
Quoting an Arizona lot
- 01
Measure or read the stencil
Flange x traverse x drum, in inches, for each size in the pile.
- 02
Count and photograph
A count per size, a wide photo and a close stencil photo. Show any sun-split flanges.
- 03
Tell us where and how
City or nearest town, road access for a 53-foot trailer, and loading equipment.
- 04
Read the offer
Each size priced on its own, with the freight assumption stated.
Questions people ask
Do you buy Service Wire reels that don't make a full truckload?
Yes. Part loads and mixed lots fall outside Service Wire's return terms, and we write them up and price them like any other reels.
Are sun-damaged reels worth anything?
Often yes, if the checking is on the surface. A reel with a flange split through the ply, or a cracked arbor hole, won't carry cable and we won't pay for it as a reel.
Can you collect from a remote mine or transmission site?
We can arrange it if a truck can reach and load the reels. Freight per reel is higher far from the metros, so a larger count helps.
Do you buy steel reels from SunZia or other HVDC work?
No. We trade wooden reels only. Steel reels generally go back to their owner under a return charge.
Which reels sell best in Phoenix?
Mid sizes, roughly 36 to 60 inch flanges, because building wire, URD and fiber crews all use them and a trailer carries a useful number.