Indiana reel desk: buying and selling empty spools

Indiana's wire plants

Southwire lists three plants in Bremen, in northern Indiana south of South Bend: bare wire, Hi-Temp and OEM extrusion. It also lists a plant in Lafayette, on I-65 northwest of Indianapolis. Cerrowire lists an Indiana plant in Crothersville, in the south of the state on I-65 between Seymour and Louisville.

Prysmian lists locations in Indianapolis, Lebanon and Marion on its contact page, but the page doesn't say whether they are plants, offices or warehouses, so we leave them off the list.

Bare wire, high-temperature wire and OEM wire often go to other manufacturers rather than to construction sites, and they tend to ship on smaller reels and spools. Cerrowire makes building wire. So the empties tied to Indiana plants are mostly the small and mid-size reels that factories and electrical contractors use.

Factories as reel sources

Indiana has more manufacturing jobs as a share of its workforce than most states, and many factories buy wire on reels for their own products: motors, appliances, vehicles and parts, transformers and controls. Each reel that empties on a production line is a reel the factory has to store or get rid of.

Factory empties are often in better shape than field reels. They have been handled indoors, lifted by shaft rather than by fork, and kept off wet ground. A plant that sends us a lot of identical reels in good condition is offering exactly what a buyer wants: one size, many of them, sound arbors. If you run a plant with a back lot full of empties, a count and a photo of one stencil may be all we need.

Five investor-owned utilities

EIA's 2024 table of Indiana's top five retailers is all investor-owned: Duke Energy Indiana, Northern Indiana Public Service Company (NIPSCO), Indiana Michigan Power, AES Indiana and Southern Indiana Gas and Electric. Duke covers much of central and southern Indiana, NIPSCO the north, Indiana Michigan Power the northeast around Fort Wayne and Muncie, AES the Indianapolis area, and Southern Indiana Gas and Electric the Evansville area. Rural co-ops and municipal utilities serve much of the rest.

Grid work across those systems, from suburban growth around Indianapolis to industrial service in the northwest and new large-load customers, leaves the bigger nailed reels behind with line contractors.

The crossroads and what it does for freight

I-65, I-69, I-70 and I-74 all reach Indianapolis, and I-465 rings the city. I-94 and the Indiana Toll Road cross the northwest corner toward Chicago, and I-64 crosses the south near Evansville. Trucks pass through Indiana on their way between Chicago, Louisville, Cincinnati, Columbus, Detroit and St. Louis.

That traffic helps a reel seller. A lot near any of those routes is likely to find a trailer heading the right way. A lot in Gary or Hammond is effectively a Chicago lot. A lot in Jeffersonville or Clarksville is across the river from Louisville. A lot in Richmond is an hour from Dayton.

• Northwest: Gary, Hammond, Merrillville, close to Chicago on I-94 and I-80/90
• North: South Bend, Elkhart, Bremen, on the Toll Road and US-31
• Northeast: Fort Wayne on I-69
• Central: Indianapolis, Lafayette, Muncie, Kokomo
• Southwest: Evansville and Terre Haute on I-64, I-69 and I-70
• Southeast: Columbus, Seymour, Crothersville and the Louisville suburbs on I-65

BEAD and rural Indiana

NTIA's June 2023 BEAD allocation gave Indiana $868,109,929.79. Most unserved homes are in rural counties, especially in the hilly south and across the farm country of the north and west. Fiber builders there string cable on co-op poles or plow it along county roads, and the reels empty quickly.

Fiber crews often need empty reels to wind remnants back on and move cable to the next section. If you are one of them, tell us the cable diameter and the footage you're handling. If you are finishing a section and have empties to clear, tell us the sizes and the count.

Plywood spool or nailed reel: telling them apart

Indiana lots often mix two kinds of wooden reel, and they sell to different people. Plywood reels have flanges cut from sheet plywood and drums of laminated fiberboard tube or shaped staves; Southwire describes them as built for light to medium loads. Nailed wood reels have two-ply flanges with the layers nailed together at right angles and drums made of staves; Southwire describes them as built for medium to heavy loads.

A plywood spool with a 2 inch arbor from a factory line suits a contractor moving building wire or a shop that winds its own lengths. A nailed reel with a 3 inch or larger arbor hole suits a line crew with a reel trailer or payoff stand. Count them separately and we can offer each to the right buyer.

The last row is our own description of who usually buys each kind, not part of Southwire's notes.

Sending an Indiana lot

Winter in northern Indiana brings lake-effect snow near Lake Michigan, and freeze and thaw can heave gravel yards. Reels stood on their flanges on firm ground are easy to find and load in any season.

1. 01

   Separate spools from reels

   Small plywood spools from factory wire go in one group, nailed field reels in another.

2. 02

   Measure each size

   Flange, traverse and drum in inches, or a photo of the reel stencil.

3. 03

   Count

   A number per size. For factory spools, a count per pallet or per stack is fine.

4. 04

   Describe the dock

   Factories often have docks: tell us if it is dock height, and whether a forklift is free on loading day.