Selling cable reels in Connecticut, and buying them

Kerite in Seymour: power cable from the Naugatuck Valley

Marmon Utility lists Kerite Power Cable in Seymour, a Naugatuck Valley town on Route 8 between Waterbury and the coast. Kerite makes medium and high voltage power cable for utilities, and power cable of that kind generally ships on heavy-duty nailed wood reels. Those reels leave Connecticut full and come to rest empty at utility yards across the country.

A plant like Kerite's also matters locally. Utility contractors in Connecticut and nearby states often hold reels from the same families of sizes the plant ships on, and a clean, sound lot of matched size is the kind of thing a cable maker or a large contractor may want back. If you have one, write it up carefully: size, count and condition.

Reading the stencil on a utility reel

A power cable reel from a Connecticut utility job usually tells you a lot before you measure anything. Okonite's technical bulletin lists what is normally stenciled on each flange of a larger reel: the cable supplier's name, the class of the reel, an arrow showing the rolling direction, the dimensions as flange x inside traverse x drum, the reel manufacturer and the date it was assembled. On reels with flanges under 40 inches, usually only the dimensions, the reel maker and the date appear.

Class matters. Okonite describes Class 1 as standard duty and Class 2 as heavy duty for reusable wood reels. Protective wrap has its own classes under NEMA WC 26, and Class 4, extra heavy duty, means wood lagging or a double wrap of solid fiberboard. If an empty still carries its lagging, or the stencil reads Class 2, say so in your write-up; it tells a buyer the reel was built for a heavy load.

Eversource, United Illuminating and the contractors

Connecticut Light & Power, which does business as Eversource, sold 9,210,913 MWh at retail in 2024 and covers most of the state. United Illuminating serves New Haven, Bridgeport and the towns around them. Retail marketers such as Constellation and Direct Energy sell power over those wires, but the wires and the line work are the utilities'.

Storm hardening is a big part of that work in Connecticut, a heavily wooded state where tree damage takes down lines in every major storm. Hardening means covered conductor, new poles and, in places, moving lines underground. All of it leaves empties: mid-size reels from distribution cable, smaller ones from secondary and service drops. Contractors doing that work are the most common sellers here.

Truck routes, and the parkway trucks can't use

Connecticut's freight runs on four interstates. I-95 follows the shoreline from Greenwich through Stamford, Bridgeport, New Haven and New London to Rhode Island. I-84 crosses from Danbury through Waterbury and Hartford toward Massachusetts. I-91 runs north from New Haven through Hartford to Springfield. I-395 links the south-east coast to Worcester. The Merritt Parkway, parallel to I-95 in Fairfield County, is closed to commercial trucks, so shoreline pickups use I-95 and its congestion.

The state is small, so a truck can often take reels from two yards in a day: a Waterbury lot and a New Haven lot are close together. Prysmian lists a location in Willimantic on its contact page, though it doesn't say what the site is, so we don't call it a plant.

Old towns, tight yards

Many Connecticut contractors work out of small yards in old mill towns, with narrow streets and little room for a 53-foot trailer to turn. If that is your yard, tell us. A shorter truck or a nearby lot where a trailer can stage may be the answer. Either changes the freight per reel, and we would rather plan it than find out on the day.

Winter adds snow, ice and parking bans. Reels stored flat fill with ice, and frozen water opens splits in flange plies. Stand empties up on blocking in the fall.

BEAD in a small, wired state

Connecticut's BEAD allocation in NTIA's June 2023 table is $144,180,792.71, among the smallest in the country, because most of the state already has wired service. Remaining gaps are in the rural north-west and north-east. Fiber work here is mostly carrier upgrades in the cities and suburbs, which use small and mid reels for cut lengths in conduit. Clean 24 to 42 inch reels with fiber-ready drums are what those crews ask for.

What to send

1. 01

   Size each group

   Read flange x traverse x drum off the stencil for each size.

2. 02

   Count them

   Stand them on their flanges and count by size.

3. 03

   Photograph

   A wide shot, a stencil per size and the damage, if any.

4. 04

   Describe the yard

   Town, room for a trailer, loading equipment, hours and any deadline.