We buy surplus feeder cable

Feeder sits at the top of the value range on most commercial and industrial jobs. We buy 600 V and 1 kV cable from 1/0 AWG through 750 kcmil, in copper and aluminum, single conductor and multi-conductor, including paralleled sets that were pulled as a group. It comes from switchboard replacements, transformer changeouts, service upgrades and the laydown of a job that finished early.

Feeder is where a commercial or industrial job concentrates its metal. A single reel of 500 kcmil copper can carry more value than a truckload of small wire, which is why the reel list for a feeder lot should be accurate before anything is loaded.

Single conductor, multi-conductor and paralleled sets

Large services are often run as parallel sets: two, three or four single conductors per phase, pulled together and terminated together. A set is only useful as a set, which means the lengths have to match and the phase identification has to survive.

Multi-conductor feeder packs the phases and the ground into one jacket and is easier to keep together. Both are bought, but a paralleled set is listed as one item with its conductor count, its length and the number of runs, not as four separate reels.

Length and count against the scale ticket

A scale ticket tells you what a load weighs. It does not tell you whether the cable in it can be used again. Two hundred feet of 750 kcmil on a reel is a different asset from the same metal cut into fifteen-foot tails, even though the scale reads the same.

So we read length and count first, then condition, then weight. That sequence is why a photograph of the tag matters more than a photograph of the pallet. Where the tag is gone, the print on the jacket gives the size and the reel is measured.

Feeder cut-offs from a switchboard change

A switchboard or transformer replacement leaves feeder in two shapes: the tails that were cut to reach the old equipment, and the reels that were bought for the job and not fully used. The second is the better material and it is usually still tagged.

For a paralleled set, write down how many runs, the length of each, and whether the phase markings are still readable. Tape the ends and keep the runs banded together. A set that arrives as four loose coils in a box has lost most of what made it valuable.

Feeder cable follows the buildings. Downtown Austin office and hotel renovations pull large services out of basements and risers, and the new towers along the Green Water Treatment Plant site and around Republic Square put it in. Both ends of that cycle produce surplus.

Out along SH-130 and SH-71, the industrial and data hall builds use paralleled copper in quantities that dwarf a downtown job. Suburban service work in Cedar Park, Kyle and Georgetown adds smaller lots, often a single reel of 4/0 left from a panel change.