Mixed lots · Harris County / Greater Houston
We buy mixed lots of wire and cable.
One pallet, six cable types, three voltage classes and a stack of cut lengths. A mixed lot does not need to be sorted before you offer it, only described honestly.
Mixed lots arrive the way work ends. A pallet wrapped in stretch film with tray cable on the bottom, four coils of THHN on top, a partial of control cable wedged into the gap and a bundle of cut SOOW cord leaning against the side. Nobody staged it for a buyer. Someone cleared a shelf, a conex or the back of a van and put the material where it would stop being in the way.
That pile is what we buy. It does not have to be separated before you call, because sorting is part of the review and it happens after the material is described. What the review needs is a rough picture of the groups, an honest count of each one, and enough photographs that the person reading them can tell a 500 MCM feeder from a coil of 12 AWG at a glance. Two frames usually settle it.
What usually ends up on a mixed pallet
The same handful of constructions turn up again and again. Building wire in THHN and XHHW, often in colours nobody uses twice. Tray cable in TC and TC-ER, shielded and unshielded, 600 V and 2 kV. Control cable from panel work, 14 to 10 AWG, sometimes with the numbered conductors still legible. Flexible cord in SOOW and SEOOW, cut into lengths that were right for one job and nothing since.
Then the odds and ends. A short length of 5 kV shielded feeder left after a motor change. Welding cable in 1/0 or 2/0 with lugs still crimped on. Instrumentation pairs and triads pulled from a tray and never re-terminated. URD from a service replacement, and bare copper from a grounding upgrade. A mixed lot is not random. It is the residue of several kinds of work that happened in one place, and each group inside it gets reviewed on its own terms.
- Building wire: THHN, THWN and XHHW, 14 AWG to 500 MCM
- Tray cable: TC and TC-ER, 600 V and 2 kV
- Control and instrumentation cable, shielded or not
- Flexible cord: SOOW, SEOOW and welding lead
- Cut lengths of feeder, service and grounding cable
How a mixed lot gets sorted
Sorting runs in two passes. The first separates by construction, because a reel of 15 kV cable and a spool of 12 AWG are reviewed on completely different terms and should never be averaged into one figure. The second pass works inside each group: size, conductor material, voltage class and length. Copper and aluminium stay apart, and anything pulled through conduit is marked as used rather than surplus.
Most sellers do not need to sort anything. If the material is already grouped on the pallet, leave it grouped and photograph the groups. If it is loose in a gaylord, say so, and say roughly how full it is. A gaylord of mixed cut lengths is a normal thing to receive. It is reviewed as a package, with metal content setting the floor and the reusable lengths adding to it from there.
Sorting belongs in the review, not in your weekend. Do not spend two days separating a pallet to make it presentable.
Photographs that let a mixed lot be quoted
A mixed lot lives or dies on photographs. Shoot each group as a group, from a step back, with the reel flanges or the coil ends facing the camera so sizes can be compared by eye. Then take one close frame per group: the reel tag where there is one, the jacket printing where there is not. Four or five frames will usually cover a pallet of six groups.
Scale helps more than people expect. Put a boot, a tape measure or a pallet corner in the frame. Daylight beats a flash, and a flash fired straight into a paper tag turns it into a white rectangle. If the pallet is still wrapped, cut the film back before you shoot rather than after, and make sure the ground under the pallet is in at least one frame.
- One wide frame per group, with the pallet edge in view
- One close frame of each reel tag or jacket print
- A cut end showing conductor and insulation
- The storage area, so sun and water exposure are visible
- A rough count by size, written into the message
The notes matter as much as the images. Approximate quantities do not need to be exact, but they do need to be honest, because a lot described as forty coils and photographed as fifteen slows everything down.
Why a mixed lot can still be quoted
A buyer does not need one clean grade to make an offer. Metal content gives a floor, since copper and aluminium are weighed and the lot cannot come to less than the recovered metal. Against that floor, the reusable part is judged on construction, size, voltage class, remaining length and condition. A mixed lot simply carries several answers on one pallet instead of one, which is a normal week rather than an exception.
What makes a review hard is missing information, not mixed material. A photographed reel tag, a rough count per group and a note about where the pallet has been stored will usually carry a lot to a figure. Where the material is genuinely scrap, that gets said plainly instead of being dressed up as reusable cable, and the metal value is still there.
Questions sellers ask
Do I have to separate a mixed pallet before collection?
No. Keep the material grouped the way it already sits and photograph each group. Sorting is part of the review, and pulling a pallet apart at your yard usually takes more time than it saves. If it is already grouped by type, say how, so the review starts in the right place.
How are cut lengths handled when they are mixed in?
Cut lengths are reviewed on their own terms. A short piece of large feeder can still be usable; a two foot tail of building wire is metal. Bundle cut lengths by size, note roughly how many there are, and the review will not have to guess what is underneath the reels.
Can a mixed lot include cable of different voltages?
Yes, and it usually does. Medium voltage is kept separate from 600 V material during review, because the two are handled differently and judged differently. Mark which reels are above 1 kV if you know, and leave the rest to the inspection.
What if none of the reels have tags?
Jacket printing and the cut end carry most of what a tag would tell. Wipe a section clean, read it in daylight and photograph it. Where the print is gone too, conductor material, strand count and overall diameter normally narrow the construction enough to review the lot.
Buying desk · Greater Houston
Got this cable in stock?
Tell us what is on the reel, where it sits and what condition it is in. A buyer reviews the lot, asks for photographs of the tag and the cut end, and comes back with a real answer — not a request to call a call centre.
- Cable type, size and voltage class
- Footage, reel count or weight, and condition
- City, and whether the site has loading equipment