Illinois wooden reels, Chicago to Cairo

Du Quoin and the downstate plant

The one cable plant in Illinois on the makers' pages in our research is Prysmian's plant in Du Quoin, in Perry County in southern Illinois. Prysmian held a ribbon cutting for a $63.8 million expansion there, and a new solar farm supplies about half of the plant's power.

Du Quoin lies on US-51, a few miles west of I-57, roughly 90 minutes southeast of St. Louis. Cable from there goes out on wooden reels across the Midwest, and the empties end up with contractors and utilities wherever it is installed. Southwire also lists a distribution center in Carol Stream, in the western Chicago suburbs, though that is a warehouse rather than a plant.

ComEd in the north, Ameren downstate

Illinois lets customers buy power from retail suppliers, so EIA's 2024 top five retailers mix utilities with marketers. Commonwealth Edison is first, then Constellation NewEnergy, Ameren Illinois, Direct Energy Business and Calpine Energy Solutions. The marketers sell electricity but don't build lines. ComEd and Ameren do.

ComEd serves Chicago and most of northern Illinois. Its distribution and transmission work across the metro is constant, with underground cable in the city and fast-growing suburbs and data center campuses to serve. Ameren Illinois covers most of central and southern Illinois, with long rural lines, many small towns and storm rebuilds after the spring and summer severe weather. Co-ops and city utilities fill in the rest.

Chicago: easy to ship from, busy to load in

More interstates meet around Chicago than around almost any other city: I-55, I-57, I-80, I-88, I-90 and I-94 all reach the metro, and trucks run out of it in every direction. For a reel lot, that means there's nearly always a trailer heading the right way. A lot in Joliet, Elgin or Aurora can usually go out without a long empty run first.

The trade-off is access. City and inner-suburb yards are tight, with narrow gates, low wires and traffic. Many sites have set receiving hours and won't let a driver in without an appointment. Tell us all of that up front.

• Gate width and turning room for a 53-foot trailer
• Receiving hours, appointment rules and site safety gear
• Forklift on site and who will run it
• Low wires or other overhead obstacles near the loading spot
• Whether the reels can be staged near the gate before the truck arrives

Downstate distances

Illinois is close to 390 miles long from the Wisconsin line to Cairo. South of I-80 it is mostly farm country, with Peoria, Bloomington-Normal, Champaign-Urbana, Springfield and Decatur as the main cities, and smaller towns between them. Southern Illinois, below I-64, is hillier and more wooded.

Downstate lots are often closer to buyers in neighboring states than to Chicago. A Metro East lot across the river from St. Louis is a St. Louis lot for freight. A Quad Cities lot pairs with Davenport across the Mississippi in Iowa. A lot near Danville or Champaign may suit a buyer in Indianapolis.

Grain Belt Express and fiber money

Invenergy's Grain Belt Express, with project pages for Kansas, Missouri and Illinois, is planned to deliver 5,000 megawatts and cites $11 billion in private transmission investment. Its eastern end reaches into Illinois. Big transmission work brings large reels in and leaves them behind in laydown yards.

On the fiber side, NTIA's June 2023 BEAD table gave Illinois $1,040,420,751.50. Most unserved homes are downstate, on farms and in small towns across central and southern Illinois. Fiber there goes on poles or is plowed along rural roads, and builders need empty reels sized for their cable to handle remnants and cut lengths.

Who buys reels in Illinois

In the Chicago area, most of the reels we place go to electrical contractors who need a few reels at a time, to re-spoolers who cut long lengths down for smaller jobs, and to data center and industrial contractors who want matched sets of mid-size reels. Downstate, buyers are more often line and fiber crews working the rural build, and farm operations that want a sound reel for wire or hose.

Each wants something different from a reel. A re-spooler cares about a round arbor hole and flat flanges that won't wobble on a payoff stand. A fiber crew cares about drum diameter. A line contractor cares about load rating and out-to-out width, so the reel fits its trailer and reel stands. Tell us the job, and we'll match the reel to it rather than just the size.

Winter and reels

Northern Illinois winters are cold and snowy, and a yard full of empties under snow is hard to count and harder to load. If you can, stand reels up on their flanges and stage them on gravel before the ground freezes; they're easier to find, read and lift in January that way. Freeze and thaw also opens up wet flange plies on reels left lying in water.

1. 01

   Stand and group

   On their flanges, one row per size, stencils facing out.

2. 02

   Count and measure

   Flange x traverse x drum and a count for each group.

3. 03

   Photograph

   The pile, a stencil per size and any damage.

4. 04

   Send the site details

   Town, access, hours and loading equipment.