We are the buyer, not a scrap yard
A scrap yard pays you metal weight. They chop the reel, strip the jacket, and sell copper by the pound. Everything the cable is actually worth — the insulation rating, the put-up length, the fact that it is still a current catalog item — disappears in the chopper.
We buy cable to resell as cable. A full reel of 500 kcmil THHN with legible markings and an unspliced put-up is worth considerably more to the contractor who needs it next month than it is to a chopping line. That difference is what we pay you for, and it is the entire reason this company exists.
We write an itemized offer, we pay before the load leaves your property, and we cover the freight and the rigging. If the reels are junk, we will tell you they are junk instead of writing a number and then finding reasons to reduce it on load-out day.
The reel tag decides the number
Almost every question we get comes down to one thing: can the next user trust what is on the reel. A stapled tag showing 500 kcmil THHN, a put-up length and a manufacturer is a document. Cable with no tag, spliced in three places and half unwound in the weather is metal.
Large MCM cable is where this matters most. MCM — thousand circular mils, the older way of writing what a spec sheet now calls kcmil — covers the heavy feeder sizes: 250 MCM, 350 MCM, 500 MCM, 750 MCM, 1000 MCM and up. Those reels are the most valuable thing on most surplus lists and the most expensive to replace, so a legible tag on a 500 MCM reel is worth real money to the next contractor who needs one.
That is why we ask for a photograph of the flange before anything else. Nobody has to unwind, meter or test a reel for us. Between the tag, the reel diameter and a look at the cut end, we can usually price a load the same day it arrives.
Cable families we price
Sixteen states, and we drive to the load
Freight is the quiet part of every offer. A load in Cleveland or Milwaukee moves on lanes that run every day and costs very little to recover. A load two hours off the interstate in the Mississippi Delta costs real money to reach, and pretending otherwise just means somebody shaves the number later.
We would rather say it up front. We cover the freight and the rigging on every load we buy, and the state pages below explain what the haul looks like from that state, which lanes we run, and what kind of work generates surplus reels there in the first place.
States we buy in
Reels come loose for a reason
Nobody orders cable planning to sell it. It piles up when a job is canceled after the material was released, when a plant shuts a line and the spare stock has no home, when a demolition contractor wins a scope that includes the electrical, or when a warehouse count finally gets done and there are forty reels nobody can account for.
Each of those arrives with different paperwork, different urgency and different condition, so each one is handled differently. Find the one that matches your situation.
Twenty-five straight answers
Before anyone calls a buyer they usually want to know one specific thing. What is a reel of 500 MCM actually worth. Does anybody want fifteen-year-old cable that never left the storeroom. Is three reels enough to be worth a trip, or do you need a truckload. Whether XHHW-2 prices differently from THHN.
Rather than bury those answers in a sales page, each one has its own guide. They are written for the person holding the reel — a contractor, a plant electrician, a purchasing agent, a co-op storekeeper — and they say what we actually look at and why.
- Wire buyers near me
- Who buys wire and cable
- Where to sell cable
- Sell wiring and cabling
- Electrical surplus buyers
- What is my wire worth
- Copper above scrap
- Free cable appraisal
- Obsolete cable
- Electrical contractors
- Utilities and co-ops
- Plant MRO storerooms
- Data centers
- Distributor overstock
- MCM and kcmil feeder
- THHN by size
- XHHW and XHHW-2
- 15kV shielded cable
- URD primary cable
- Aluminum and ACSR
- Tray and VFD cable
- Full and partial reels
- Truckload lots
- Plant cleanouts
- Liquidation
Send the reel tag. We send a number.
Photograph the reel flange and the tag. That tag carries the conductor size, the insulation type, the voltage class and usually the put-up length — which is most of what we need to price it. A tape measure on the remaining cable helps if the tag is gone.
Call (954) 740-1983 or use the form at the top of this page. We do not need the load tested, and we do not need it moved before we look at it.