Kansas cable reels on the long I-70 haul

A copper cable plant in the middle of the state

Superior Essex Communications lists a copper manufacturing plant in Hoisington, in Barton County near Great Bend. It's the only cable plant in Kansas on the makers' pages in our research. Copper communications cable goes out on wooden reels to telephone companies, contractors and distributors, and many of those reels are emptied in Kansas and the neighboring states.

A plant ships reels full, so Hoisington isn't where the empties gather. They gather at the telephone co-ops, contractors and distributors who installed or sold the cable, and those yards are spread across the whole state.

Evergy and the rest of the grid

EIA's 2024 table of Kansas's top five retailers shows how much of the state one company serves: Evergy Kansas South, Evergy Kansas Central and Evergy Metro are the first three, followed by the City of Kansas City, Kansas utility and Midwest Energy, a cooperative based in Hays. Behind them are dozens of co-ops and city utilities serving the rural west.

Distribution rebuilds in Wichita, Topeka and the Kansas City suburbs leave the usual 42 to 72 inch nailed reels. Out west, long rural lines and substation work leave bigger ones. And Kansas wind farms, which cover large areas of the central and western counties, leave collection cable reels in their laydown yards when construction ends.

Grain Belt Express

Invenergy's Grain Belt Express is a transmission line project with state pages for Kansas, Missouri and Illinois, planned to deliver 5,000 megawatts. The project cites $11 billion in private transmission investment. A line of that length takes a great deal of conductor and cable, and the converter stations and connections at each end take more.

We mention it because big transmission projects change the reel market where they are built: demand for large reels while cable is pulled, and a supply of empties once each section is done. We don't speak for the project or claim any role in it.

Freight across a wide state

Kansas is about 400 miles from the Missouri line to Colorado on I-70. Most of the population is in the east, in the Kansas City area, Topeka, Lawrence and Wichita. West of Salina and Wichita, towns are small and far apart.

That shapes how we work. A lot in Olathe or Lenexa is effectively a Kansas City lot, with buyers on both sides of the state line. A lot in Wichita sits on I-35 and I-135, within reach of Oklahoma City and Salina. A lot in Garden City or Goodland is a long haul from almost anywhere, and it often makes sense only as a full trailer, or combined with reels from eastern Colorado or the Oklahoma Panhandle.

Selling a lot from western Kansas

Western Kansas yards usually have room to turn a semi and firm ground in dry weather. What they lack is nearby buyers. So we price a western lot with its freight in full view. A big lot of good common sizes can travel; a handful of odd sizes usually can't, unless a trailer is passing anyway.

Be specific about the sizes. In a long-haul state, a lot of 40 reels all 48x36x24 is far easier to sell than 40 reels in 15 sizes, because the buyer at the far end has a use for every one.

1. 01

   Group by size

   Stand reels on their flanges, one row per size.

2. 02

   Count

   Number per size; a careful estimate is fine for a first quote.

3. 03

   Photograph

   A wide shot, one reel stencil per size and close-ups of damage.

4. 04

   Tell us the town and access

   Nearest highway, gate, ground and loading equipment.

Buying reels in Kansas

Kansas buyers tend to want reels for one of four jobs: an electrical contractor in Wichita or Johnson County moving building wire between sites, a line contractor storing URD pulled back from a failed run, a telephone or fiber crew re-spooling cut lengths, or a farm or ranch that wants a sturdy reel for fence wire, hose or rope. The first three need a particular drum size for the cable; the last just needs a sound reel of a handy size.

Give us the cable diameter and the footage, or the reel size if you know it, and the town. We look in Kansas first and then in Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska. A reel coming 150 miles costs a lot less to deliver than one coming 600, and in a state this size the difference is often larger than the price of the reel itself.

If the only reels close by are a size off, we tell you what the nearest size will hold, using the NEMA capacity formula our calculator is based on, so you can decide whether it will do.

BEAD and fiber in Kansas

NTIA's June 2023 BEAD allocation for Kansas was $451,725,998.15. With so many small towns and farms spread across the west, fiber builders cover a lot of ground per home. They plow and bore cable into the prairie and string it on co-op poles, and they need reels both full and empty: full for the cable they place, empty for remnants and re-spooling.

Many Kansas telephone co-ops have run fiber in their own territories for years, and their yards often hold a mix of old copper cable reels and newer fiber reels. Both have buyers.

Winter and spring in Kansas

Winter storms and blowing snow can close I-70 in western Kansas for a day or more, and spring brings severe storms and tornadoes across the state. Neither stops a reel trade, but both can move a pickup date. We confirm a pickup when the road and the truck are both ready.