Florida reel lots: storm work, fiber and the peninsula
We buy empty wooden cable reels across Florida and sell reels to crews there, arranging the truck for each lot. Florida has no major wire plant on the makers' lists, so its empties come from line work, storm restoration and fiber builds, and the way freight moves on and off the peninsula has a real bearing on what a lot is worth.
- BEAD allocation
- $1.17 billion
- Wire and cable plants
- None found on makers' pages
- Main corridors
- I-95, I-75, I-4, I-10, Florida's Turnpike
- Hurricane season
- June 1 to November 30
What fills Florida yards
No wire or cable plant in Florida turned up on the makers' own location pages in the research behind this site. Southwire lists a distribution center in Jacksonville, a facility in Largo and a service hub in Miami, but nothing it calls a plant. So the empties here are reels that came in full from Georgia, Alabama, the Carolinas or Texas and were emptied on Florida jobs.
Those jobs are mostly grid and communications work. Florida's utilities have moved a lot of distribution line underground and rebuilt feeders to stand up to wind, and every mile of underground cable arrives on a reel. Fiber builders add their own share, and commercial construction around Orlando, Tampa and the southeast coast keeps electrical contractors supplied with building wire on small and mid-size reels.
Four utilities do most of the selling
EIA's 2024 list of the state's top five retailers is Florida Power and Light, Duke Energy Florida and Tampa Electric, all investor-owned, then two public systems: JEA in Jacksonville and the Orlando Utilities Commission. Behind them are many smaller city utilities and co-ops, particularly in the Panhandle and the rural middle of the state.
For a reel seller, that means utility yards and the contractors working for them are where the large reels sit: 60 to 84 inch flanges that carried primary underground cable, and plenty of 42s and 48s from secondary and service work.
Hurricane season and reels
The Atlantic hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30. After a storm, utilities and the mutual aid crews that come in from other states go through cable fast, and reels empty in days instead of months. The rebuild leaves staging areas full of empties that nobody has time to deal with until the lights are back on.
Storms affect the reels themselves too. An empty wooden reel left lying on its rim in standing water soaks up moisture through the flange edge and the drum staves. Stood on its flanges on dry ground or on dunnage, it keeps far better. If you are stacking empties ahead of a storm, standing them up and strapping them together keeps them from rolling.
- Before the season: clear the reels you won't need so they aren't loose in a yard during high winds.
- During a restoration push: set empties aside by size; a count can wait, but mixing sizes makes the count harder later.
- After the rebuild: send us the count and photos once the crews have gone home; a backlog of empties is a normal lot for us.
A peninsula changes the freight
Florida takes in far more freight by truck than it ships out, which is well known in trucking. Trucks that bring goods down I-75 and I-95 often look for loads heading north. For a reel lot leaving the state, that can make the outbound trailer cheaper than the same distance would cost in the other direction.
So a Florida yard full of empties can sometimes reach a buyer in Georgia or Alabama at a reasonable cost per reel, while reels bought for a Florida job are more likely to come from inside the state. Trailers from the Panhandle along I-10 can be combined with lots in south Alabama or Mississippi.
| Region | Metros | Usual route north or west |
|---|---|---|
| Southeast coast | Miami, Fort Lauderdale, West Palm Beach | I-95 or Florida's Turnpike |
| Tampa Bay and Southwest | Tampa, St. Petersburg, Fort Myers | I-75 |
| Central | Orlando, Lakeland | I-4 to I-75 or I-95 |
| Northeast | Jacksonville | I-95 or I-10 |
| Panhandle | Tallahassee, Pensacola, Panama City | I-10 west to Alabama |
One Florida buyer's published prices
We don't publish our prices. The only public price list for used reels we found is from AAA-Affordable Pallets of Tampa, which posts what it pays for used wooden cable reels by size. Its list runs from $3.00 for a 24x30 inch reel to $10.00 for 48x28x24, 50x32x24 and 54x32x24 inch reels, received 7:00 AM to 2:00 PM Monday to Friday. Those are one yard's buying figures, and they show the low end of what a used reel fetches.
What we quote depends on things a flat list can't see: the count of each size, the condition of the staves and arbor holes, and where the reels are headed. A 54x32x24 in good shape going to a contractor who needs exactly that size is worth more than one sold for its wood.
BEAD in Florida
NTIA's June 2023 table allocated Florida $1,169,947,392.70. Rural and small-town Florida, from the Big Bend to the area around Lake Okeechobee, has long stretches where fiber has to go up on poles or underground across wetland and sandy ground. A build on that scale draws in fiber reels by the trailer, and the crews doing it often want empty reels to take back slack and cut lengths.
What to send from a Florida yard
- 01
The sizes
Flange, traverse and drum for each size, from the reel stencil or a tape.
- 02
The counts
How many of each. Ballpark is fine for a first quote.
- 03
The condition
Note any reels that sat in water, any split flanges and any torn arbor holes.
- 04
The site
City, loading equipment and how a trailer gets in.
Questions people ask
Do you buy reels left behind after a hurricane restoration?
Yes. Restoration staging areas are often left with large numbers of mixed empties, and those make up a normal lot for us once the work is done.
Are water-damaged reels worth anything?
Sometimes. A reel that got wet and dried out with sound staves and a solid arbor is still usable. One with soft, rotting flange plies is not, and we'll tell you which is which from the photos.
Why not just sell to a local pallet yard?
You can, and one Tampa buyer publishes its prices. We look at the lot by size and find a buyer who needs those reels, which can pay more for good sizes in good condition.
Can you get reels to the Keys?
We can arrange it, but US-1 is the only road in and the freight per reel is high, so it suits a full lot better than a few reels.