We buy electrical wire in Katy.

Where the Katy surplus actually comes from

Three sources dominate the corridor. Warehouse shells go up with a core-and-shell electrical scope, a tenant improvement then adds distribution, and the two orders overlap. Data halls get built to a client specification that changes more than once before commissioning. Manufacturing and food-grade plants expand in phases, each one ordered separately.

Each of those leaves the same residue: feeder pulled short of the gear, tray cable ordered by the reel and used by the foot, branch wire in colours the next job has no use for. When a project is cancelled outright, an entire order can sit untouched in a laydown area until the lease on that space runs out and the pallets have to move.

The volume is what separates Katy from an inner-loop district. A single cancelled fit-out can produce more cable than a year of service work, and it arrives in a form that needs almost no interpretation, because the factory did the labelling and the contractor kept the delivery tickets on file.

• 500 MCM and 350 MCM copper feeder, 1/C and 3/C
• TC-ER tray cable, 600 V and 2 kV
• MC and AC branch cable, aluminium and steel armour
• THHN and XHHW in feeder and branch sizes
• Service entrance cable and URD
• Bare and insulated grounding conductor

Data hall work also leaves a tail of power whips, cord sets and short feeder cuts that are easier to group on one pallet than to describe line by line.

Feeder and tray cable from changed fit-outs

A cancelled fit-out is the best case in the corridor. The cable was bought for a layout that will not be built, so the reels are full, the tags are intact and the footage is whatever the factory put on the drum. Reviewing that lot comes down to confirming construction and reading the tag.

A revised fit-out is messier. Some feeder was pulled and cut at the gear, some tray cable ran to a location that later moved, and the balance sits on a cart in the corner of an electrical room. That mix is still bought, but it is graded as two lots, never-installed and removed, because the two behave differently.

Tray cable deserves its own note. TC and TC-ER gets bought by the reel for a specific tray run, and a changed route can leave hundreds of feet that nobody wants to cut down for another purpose. It stores well indoors and badly outdoors, which matters in a yard beside a highway.

How a never-installed reel gets graded

Construction comes first. A 15 kV shielded feeder and a reel of 12 AWG THHN are not in the same conversation, and the voltage class printed on the jacket settles that in seconds. Then conductor: copper in a large size holds the most metal per foot, aluminium less, and the difference is plain at the cut end.

Length matters as much as size once a reel is partial. A continuous run of several hundred feet can go back into service on another job; the same total cut into short pieces is a handling problem. Storage history fills in the rest, because a reel that stayed indoors grades higher than one that stood in the sun for a year.

Documentation is the tiebreaker. A packing list or a mill tag matching the reel removes all guesswork about insulation, jacket compound and shield type. Where that paperwork has disappeared, jacket printing and one measurement usually recover the same facts, only more slowly and with a wider margin on the footage.

Sending a Katy reel list

Send one line per reel: construction, size, conductor, voltage class, length if it is known, and whether the reel is full, partial or cut. Add the address and the loading equipment on site. A photograph of each tag saves a round of questions, and one shot of a representative cut end covers the rest.

Sites on this corridor usually have a dock, a forklift and a receiving clerk who wants the space back by Friday. Say so early. A booked dock appointment moves faster than a cold arrival, and material that leaves through a gate without paperwork tends to return as a question weeks later.

• Dock height and whether a trailer can back in
• Forklift capacity and operator availability
• Badge, escort or safety orientation requirements
• Whether the reels are already palletised
• Who signs for the material at release