Reels for electrical distributors and supply houses

Master reels in, cut reels out

A distributor's wire business runs on cutting. Building wire, cable and cord arrive from the plant on master reels, often 36 to 60 inches across, and sit on reel racks or a wire cutting machine. When a contractor orders 1,500 ft of 4/0 aluminum or 2,000 ft of 12 AWG THHN in three colors, the counter or the cutting room pays it off the master onto a smaller reel and the cut goes out on the next truck.

That creates two piles. One is empty masters: when the master runs out, its reel is an empty that the plant usually does not want back. The other is a shortage of cut reels: every cut leaves the building on a reel, and many do not come back. Sonoco's EcoReel program names distributors among the customers it suits, and offers free pickup of truckloads of viable nailed wood and polyfiber reels, but only by the truckload, and it does nothing about the branch that needs 50 small reels by next week.

Small reels a branch uses for cuts

Southwire's packaging sheet shows the reels its own building wire leaves on, and they are a good guide to what a cut room needs. The G series are plywood spools with laminated fiberboard drums and 2 inch arbor holes, under 16 inches across and 3 to 5 lb each. The N series are plywood and nailed reels for lighter loads, from 15.75 inches up, with 3.125 inch arbor holes. The C series are nailed reels reinforced for copper and steel.

Matching cut reels to the cutting line

A cut reel has to fit the branch's equipment and hold the cut. The equipment side comes down to the arbor hole and the out-to-out width. A take-up spindle sized for 3.125 inch holes will not take a 2 inch G series spool without an adapter, and a measuring machine built for 20 inch wide reels will not take an N-7P at 25 inches. Tell us the spindle size and the widest reel your take-up accepts and we will only send reels that fit.

The cut side is footage and bend. Anixter's NEMA formula, Footage = 0.262 x T x (H - C) x (D + H - C) / d squared, gives an approximate capacity, and NEMA's minimum drum for nonshielded cable up to 2,000 volts is 10 times the cable diameter. A 24x12x10 holds about 1,207 ft of 0.5 inch cable by that formula, and a 30x18x12 about 2,509 ft, which covers most contractor cuts of building wire and small feeders.

Where empty masters stack up

In a branch, empties end up behind the building, along the fence of the yard or in the back corner of the warehouse, usually stood on their flanges in rows. At a regional distribution center they pile up by the dock. Most are nailed wood masters from 36 to 60 inches: the plant's non-returnable reels that came in with the wire. Southwire lists its wooden reels as non-returnable with no deposit, and Service Wire's free return takes only its own labelled 30 to 72 inch nailed reels in full truckloads with sound arbor holes and at least 75% of staves intact. A branch that buys from Encore Wire in McKinney, Texas, from Southwire's plants in Georgia, Alabama and Texas, and from a couple of other makers can have all of their reels in one stack, each with its own stencil and its own return rules.

The pile is a space problem before it is a money problem. A branch yard needs room for trucks to turn, and a few dozen 48 inch masters take a lot of it.

Why cut reels go missing

Cut reels leave the counter on a contractor's pickup and rarely return on their own. Some stay on the jobsite and get thrown in a dumpster when the wire is gone. Some end up in the contractor's shop, where they become the pile described on our page for contractors. A few come back months later with a stub of wire on them. The branch keeps buying new plywood reels to replace them, and new reels cost real money to ship from a reel maker for what is a light, bulky item.

Graded used reels close the gap. A trailer of small reels from a contractor's clear-out, sorted by size and arbor hole, is the same product the branch needs, and it can come from a seller a few hours away instead of from a plant states away. We grade them for the counter: flat flanges, clean drums, one size per pallet, and nothing that would snag insulation on the take-up.

One call for both piles

Because we buy and sell, a distributor can trade both ways. We quote the empty masters as a reel lot, with the freight in it, and arrange a trailer to clear them. If the branch needs cut reels, we quote those too, and where the lanes line up, the truck that brings small reels in can take masters out. Each side is priced on its own; we just make the freight work twice.

1. 01

   List the masters

   Each size as flange x traverse x drum, with a count and a note on damage.

2. 02

   List the cut reels you need

   Size, arbor hole, maximum out-to-out width and how many.

3. 03

   Send a photo of each

   One wide shot of the empties and one of a stencil.

4. 04

   Agree the timing

   Dock hours, forklift availability and whether a combined trip makes sense.

Grading reels a supply house will accept

• Arbor hole round and the right diameter for the spindle
• Plywood flanges flat and not delaminating at the rim
• Fiberboard drums on G series spools firm, not crushed or soft
• Nailed reels with staves present and no nail heads proud of the drum
• Old tails, tape and labels removed, so the cut room does not have to
• One size per pallet or row, so the counter can find them