Cable reels in Massachusetts

Reels in a state of ring roads

Greater Boston is laid out in rings. I-93 and the city's inner roads form the core, I-95 runs as Route 128 around the inner suburbs, and I-495 makes a wider loop through Lowell, Marlborough and Mansfield. Most of the state's electrical contractors, distributors and line yards sit near one of those rings, and most of its reel lots do too.

West of I-495, the Massachusetts Turnpike, I-90, carries freight to Worcester, Springfield and the Berkshires. I-91 runs north and south up the Connecticut River valley through Springfield, Holyoke and Northampton. I-195 links the South Coast cities of Fall River and New Bedford to Providence, and Route 3 and Route 6 lead to the Cape.

Who owns the wires, and the empties

Massachusetts lets customers buy power from retail marketers, which is why Constellation NewEnergy and Direct Energy appear high in EIA's 2024 sales table. The wires belong to the distribution companies. Massachusetts Electric, part of National Grid, covers much of central and western Massachusetts and parts of the North and South Shores. NSTAR Electric, part of Eversource, covers Boston and many of the surrounding towns, the Cape and the Islands, and the area around Springfield.

The state also has a long list of municipal light plants, town-owned utilities that run their own distribution. Their crews and contractors produce small, steady lots of URD and service reels. Large and small, these systems are always replacing aging underground cable, rebuilding after storms and adding capacity for new building and heat pump loads, and each job leaves empties.

These figures are energy sold by each retailer, not the size of each utility's network; much of the power moved over the two utilities' wires is sold by marketers.

Old streets and underground work

Boston, Cambridge and the older cities around them have narrow streets, crowded duct banks and little room to stage material. Underground cable work there is done in short pulls between manholes, with reels brought in as needed and taken away empty. Contractors rarely have yard space to spare, so their empties tend to collect at a single storage yard somewhere along Route 128 or I-495.

Those piles are usually mixed: utility URD and feeder reels from 48 to 72 inch flanges, building wire reels from commercial jobs, and fiber reels from carrier work. We write each size group up separately so a buyer who wants only the 48s can take them, and the seller still gets a price on the rest.

Taunton, and the cable trade nearby

No Massachusetts wire or cable plant turned up on the makers' own pages in our research. Prysmian North America lists a location in Taunton on its contact page, but the page does not say whether it is a plant, an office or a warehouse, so we don't call it a plant. Okonite's Paterson plant in New Jersey and Marmon's Kerite plant in Seymour, Connecticut are the nearest power cable plants we found listed, and much of the cable used in Massachusetts comes in from plants farther away.

For reel traffic, that means Massachusetts mostly consumes reels rather than ships them. Empties build up here, and a fair number of them travel back out of New England to wherever a crew or plant needs them.

New England winters and reel storage

Snow, freeze and thaw, and salt spray near the coast all work on stored reels. Reels left flat fill with snow and ice; freezing water widens any split in a flange ply; and nails rust faster in coastal air. Before the first storm, stand empties on their flanges on blocking or gravel, leave a lane open for the truck, and keep the stencil side readable.

Pickups do run in winter, but snow days and parking bans in the cities slow them. If a yard needs clearing by spring, it is better to send the list in the fall.

BEAD in a mostly wired state

Massachusetts received $147,422,464.39 in NTIA's June 2023 BEAD table, forty-sixth among the states, because most homes here already have wired service. What remains unserved is mainly in the hill towns of western Massachusetts and a few rural pockets elsewhere. Fiber crews on those routes, and the carriers building in the cities, keep up a steady call for small and mid reels with sound drums.

What to send from a Massachusetts yard

1. 01

   Sizes

   Flange x traverse x drum for each size, read off the reel stencil.

2. 02

   Counts

   How many of each size. Standing reels on their flanges makes the count quick and checkable.

3. 03

   Photos

   One of the whole pile, one stencil per size, and any damage up close.

4. 04

   Access

   Town, whether a 53-foot trailer can get in and turn, loading equipment and yard hours.