Selling empty cable spools in Mississippi

Starkville and what comes out of it

Southwire lists a Starkville Plant and a Starkville Distribution Center in Starkville, in the Golden Triangle of northeast Mississippi. That is the one wire plant in the state on the makers' pages in our research. Prysmian lists a location in Corinth, but its contact page doesn't say what the site is, so we don't count it as a plant.

A plant ships cable out on full reels. The empties that trace back to Starkville end up with distributors and contractors around the region. Southwire lists a reel repair and recycling facility for its own reels over in Carrollton, Georgia, and makers' return routes generally take only their own reels in set conditions. Reels that don't qualify, or come from other makers, are the ones Mississippi yards are left holding.

Utilities and co-ops

EIA's 2024 list of Mississippi's top five retailers is Entergy Mississippi, Mississippi Power, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Coast Electric Power Association and Southern Pine Electric Cooperative. Entergy serves the west and central parts of the state, including Jackson. Mississippi Power covers the southeast and the coast. TVA supplies the local systems in the north. Coast Electric and Southern Pine are two of the many co-ops that serve rural Mississippi.

Rural co-op line work is where many of the state's reels come from: long runs of overhead and underground distribution, rebuilds after storms, and service to new homes spread over large areas. A co-op yard might hold 20 or 30 empties at a time, of mixed sizes, which suits our way of writing up a lot by size.

A $1.2 billion fiber build in a rural state

NTIA's June 2023 table allocated Mississippi $1,203,561,563.05 in BEAD funding, a large figure for a state of about 3 million people. Much of it goes to places where fiber has to travel a long way between homes, through the Delta, the Piney Woods and the hill country of the northeast.

Long rural fiber routes use a lot of cable per home passed, and the reels pile up at staging yards along the route. Builders also need empties to take back remnant cable and to move cut lengths between crews. The same build that leaves empties in one county can use them in the next.

• Sellers: builders, co-ops and contractors finishing a segment
• Buyers: crews starting the next segment, or re-spooling remnants
• What we need from both: reel sizes, counts and the nearest town

Reading the stencil on a Mississippi reel

Most of the reels in a co-op or contractor yard carry a stencil painted or burned into the flange. Okonite's technical notes list what a full stencil usually shows: the cable supplier's name, the class of the reel, an arrow for the rolling direction, the size as flange x inside traverse x drum, the reel maker and the date it was assembled. On reels with flanges under 40 inches, normally only the size, the maker and the date appear.

That size line is the most useful thing on the reel for us. If it is legible, one photo per size gives us everything we need to price that group. If it has faded in the sun or been painted over, a tape measure does the same job: across the flange, between the flanges on the inside, and across the drum.

The class marking helps too. A Class 2 heavy-duty reel was built for more weight than a Class 1 standard reel of the same size, and some buyers ask for one or the other.

• Cable supplier name
• Reel class
• Rolling direction arrow
• Size: flange x inside traverse x drum
• Reel maker
• Date assembled

Distance and freight across Mississippi

Mississippi's main routes run north to south and east to west. I-55 runs from Memphis through Jackson to McComb and on to New Orleans. I-20 crosses from Vicksburg through Jackson to Meridian. I-59 runs from Meridian down to Hattiesburg and on to the Louisiana line. I-10 follows the coast. I-22 cuts across the northeast from Birmingham to Memphis past Tupelo.

Off those roads, it's two-lane highways and a lot of distance. That is why we look so hard at combining loads here. A trailer coming through the Golden Triangle from Alabama can take on reels in Starkville or Columbus. A Delta lot might go out toward Memphis. A coast lot might join reels from Mobile or New Orleans.

Weather and storage

Mississippi's coast and the southern half of the state face hurricanes from June through November, and the whole state sees severe storms and tornadoes in spring. Restoration work after either kind of storm uses a lot of cable and leaves a lot of empties.

Heat and humidity are hard on wood that sits on bare ground. A reel left lying flat in a wet field for a year will have soft flange edges and loose staves. Stood on its flanges on gravel or timbers, it can wait a long time for a buyer. Keep the stencil side out so the sizes can be read in a photo.

Selling a small Mississippi lot

Not every yard has a trailer's worth. A co-op with 15 reels or a contractor with 8 left from one job can still sell; the question is how to get the reels onto a truck cheaply. Sometimes that means waiting until we have another lot nearby. Sometimes it means moving the reels to a point on an interstate where a passing trailer can pick them up. We'll tell you which makes sense for your lot.

1. 01

   Send what you have

   Sizes, counts, a photo and the nearest town, even if it's only a handful of reels.

2. 02

   We look for a match

   A buyer nearby, or another lot that a trailer can collect on the same run.

3. 03

   We quote the lot

   With the freight shown, so you can see how distance affects it.

4. 04

   Pickup is arranged

   Once the price is agreed and a truck is set.