We buy surplus tray cable

Tray cable is read on its rating and its reel, not on the weight of the drum. TC and TC-ER arrive in the 600 V and 2 kV classes, multi-conductor power and control, shielded and unshielded, from 18 AWG up through 500 kcmil. The rating suffix matters more than most sellers expect.

The material usually comes from a package that changed: a plant expansion resized, a data hall built to a different design, a water treatment upgrade that was split into phases. Reels tend to be full or nearly full, tagged, and still banded, which makes for a clean review.

The rating printed along the jacket

TC means tray cable. TC-ER adds an exposed run rating, which allows a length to leave the tray and travel to equipment without conduit. That single suffix decides whether a reel is useful on a fast industrial job or gets passed over, so photograph the print.

Sunlight resistance, direct burial and the temperature marking printed next to the type all feed into the same read. We look at the print, the reel tag and the age of the cable together, because an older reel with a faded jacket tells you something about how it was stored.

Conductor count, shield and what is left on the reel

A 2-conductor control cable and a 24-conductor shielded power cable are not the same lot even when both are TC-ER. We list each reel by conductor count, gauge and shield type, because that is how another plant will look for it later.

Footage comes next. A full reel of 12 AWG 7-conductor is easy. A partial reel of 250 feet is reviewed against the whole-lot picture, and a mixed pallet of short tray runs is totaled rather than picked apart. Short lengths still move when the count is right.

Reel list, photographs and loading a full drum

Send a reel list with the tag details, plus a photograph of each tag and of the jacket print. If the cable was pulled and later removed, note it, because a reel that has been through a tray is examined for crushed jacket and pulled strands at the end.

Large tray reels need handling. Tell us the drum diameter and whether there is a forklift or a crane on site, since a full reel of 500 kcmil will not go on a pickup. Freight is booked once terms are agreed and the handling matches the reel.

The industrial belt along SH-130 and SH-71, from the Tesla site east of the airport up through Taylor, where the Samsung fab sits, produces tray cable in package quantities. When a tool layout or a hall design changes, the reels that were cut for it come back out of the laydown.

Water treatment plants around the Colorado River, the municipal utilities in Round Rock and Georgetown, and the material handling builds near Pflugerville all send smaller lots. We take a single shielded reel from a panel change as readily as a full pallet from a canceled package.