Wire and cable plants and their reels

How many reels a plant goes through

Few plants publish reel numbers, but Okonite has, twice. Its 2002 technical bulletin says it bought more than 85,000 wood and plywood reels and spools in 1999, more than 76,000 of them in the reusable wood reel category. Its 2016 bulletin on reel anatomy says it bought more than 100,000 wooden reels in 2015. That is one cable maker. The country has dozens of wire and cable plants, and every reel that leaves one full eventually comes empty somewhere else.

Sonoco, one of the largest reel makers, lists nailed wood reels with 14 to 116 inch flanges and plywood reels with 10 to 60 inch flanges for power, telecommunications, building wire, elevator and oil, gas and marine cable. Ely Reel builds nailed wood reels from 14 to 120 inches in Southern Yellow Pine, with 2, 3 or 4-ply flanges, and ships them assembled or as kits to save storage and freight.

Where the plants are

Plants cluster, and so do their reels. Southwire is headquartered in Carrollton, Georgia, and lists wire and cable plants in Villa Rica, Georgia, Florence, Alabama, and in Dallas, Denton and Mineral Wells, Texas. Encore Wire, now owned by Prysmian, is based in McKinney, Texas. That puts two dense wire-plant clusters in west Georgia and north Alabama, and in North Texas around Dallas-Fort Worth.

Reels move outward from those clusters full, to distributors, contractors and utilities across the country, and come back empty only when a program or a buyer pays for the trip. The empties that do surface near the plants are mostly the plants' own leftovers, described below.

How a plant picks a reel

Okonite's 2002 bulletin lays out the order. The cable's construction and outside diameter set the minimum drum. The length on the order is checked against the nearest standard reel. Then the gross cable weight is checked against the reel's loading weight. Its 2016 table shows why the last step matters: many sizes appear twice, a lighter and a heavier build, and the heavier one carries roughly twice the cable. A 72x36x36 is rated for about 4,500 lb in one build and 8,000 lb in the other.

The drum minimums come from NEMA WC 26, which Anixter's handbook reprints as multiples of cable diameter: 10 for nonshielded cable up to 2,000 volts, 14 to 20 for tape shielded, 16 for wire armored, 20 for bare conductor and for fiber, and 25 or 30 for aluminum sheathed cable. Okonite also notes that each maker sets its own clearance between the last turn of cable and the flange rim.

Reusable, refurbished and non-returnable

The industry runs reels in two loops. In the reusable loop, Okonite describes Class 1 standard duty and Class 2 heavy duty wood reels being returned to the reel maker for refurbishing as new. Where an end user holds enough of them, they are picked up free, and once brought back to the level of new reels they are sold back to cable makers at the price of new reels. Sonoco's EcoReel program works the same way: free truckload pickup of viable used reels, a seven-step repair and refurbishing process, and resale to a cable or cordage producer, with most reels recyclable three or more times.

In the non-returnable loop, the reel goes out with the cable and is not expected back. Southwire lists its wooden reels as non-returnable with no deposit, and uses the Aluminum Association's NR codes on them. Its steel reels, by contrast, are returnable with a charge.

What a plant has to sell

Plants give off reels that the refurbishing loop does not want or cannot reach. A plant that changes a product line may be left with a stack of a size it no longer ships. Reels returned by customers sometimes fail incoming inspection for reuse on the plant's own line but are still sound enough to carry cable for a contractor or a salvage yard. Odd sizes from a closed line, reels from another maker that arrived with purchased material, and reels with too few staves for a refurbisher's spec all end up in the plant's yard.

We buy those as reel lots, size by size, with condition noted, and arrange pickup by the trailer. Plants usually have a dock and a forklift, which makes them the easiest sellers to load.

• Discontinued sizes after a product changeover
• Customer returns that failed the plant's own reuse check
• Other makers' reels that came in with purchased material
• Reels short of a refurbisher's stave or arbor standard but still serviceable

Selling used reels back to a plant

Some plants and cordage makers may take graded used reels, for less demanding products, internal transfers or customers who accept them. Others will not use a reel that has left the building. When a plant asks us for reels, we ask for its spec: exact size, minimum flange ply count or class, arbor hole diameter, acceptable stave damage, and whether the plant wants a reel stenciled with another maker's name. Then we only offer lots that meet it. Service Wire's return rule for its own reels, an undamaged arbor hole and at least 75% of staves intact, is a fair floor that many buyers recognize.

Freight rules here as everywhere. A trailer of 36s, at Sonoco's 200 to a van, is cheap per reel to deliver; a load of 84s at 9 to a van is not. Plants near a seller get the best price.