WE BUY SURPLUS ELECTRICAL WIRE IN WICHITA AND SOUTH-CENTRAL KANSAS

Aircraft work and the shops that supply it

Aircraft assembly across Wichita runs on scheduled interruptions. A bay is cleared, a line is re-fed, and the cable that comes out is stacked on a pallet with the intent to sort it later. The same happens one tier down, in the machine shops and tooling houses that cut parts for the assembly lines: a five-axis cell is rewired, a test stand is rebuilt, and the tray cable from the old installation stays coiled by the wall.

Program changes create a second kind of surplus. When a build rate drops or a contract ends, stores are cleared and the material bought for that work becomes dead stock. Reels of shielded cable, control cable, VFD cable and 600-volt building wire sit on racks because nobody wants to scrap material that might be needed again.

Both kinds of load interest us, and both are ordinary in manufacturing plants that re-tool between programs. The cable does not have to be new, but the tag has to be readable. Photograph the flange and the jacket print and the quote can be specific rather than a guess.

Oilfield service in Butler, Cowley and Harper counties

The older fields east and south of Wichita keep a service sector busy. Pumpers, tank batteries, saltwater disposal sites and the shops that rebuild motors all use heavy flexible cable, and they use it hard. Welding cable and SOOW cord, VFD cable for variable-speed drives and 480-volt feeder are the everyday items, bought in long lengths and cut as needed.

Service companies rarely throw cable away. A length with a damaged jacket gets a new end put on it, and a reel that is too short for the next job goes to the back of the shop. Over a few years that back wall becomes inventory: part reels of 2/0, coils of number 6 welding cable, odd lengths of tray cable rated for wet locations.

That is buyable stock. Give the conductor size and the approximate length on each coil, and say whether the jacket is intact. A faded jacket is a price question here, not a rejection.

Hospitals, clinics and the maintenance cycle

Healthcare work is continuous and quiet. A hospital campus replaces a riser, adds an imaging room, rebuilds a pharmacy clean room or upgrades a generator transfer arrangement, and each of those jobs leaves short lengths of purpose-made cable. Fire-alarm cable, plenum-rated MC, isolated ground conductors and instrumentation cable are typical, often in boxes rather than on reels.

The clinics and surgery centers spreading through Derby, Newton and Andover produce the same material in smaller quantities. A tenant improvement in a medical office building might leave two part boxes of number 12 and a coil of low-voltage cable that nobody wants to store.

These loads are small but clean, and they are worth gathering rather than discarding one box at a time. Photograph the carton labels as well as the reels. The label usually gives the item number, the foot count and the listing marks in one frame.

• Fire-alarm and low-voltage cable in part boxes.
• Plenum-rated MC and AC from ceiling replacements.
• Isolated ground and bare copper grounding conductors.
• Instrumentation and shielded cable from lab and imaging work.

Derby, Hutchinson and the Arkansas River corridor

Derby sits about fifteen minutes south of downtown Wichita and has become a supplier and warehouse address in its own right, which means loading docks and forklifts rather than residential driveways. Hutchinson is roughly an hour northwest up the river, with grain handling, salt mining, food processing and a manufacturing base that keeps electricians on maintenance rotation year after year.

The Arkansas River ties the corridor together and occasionally reminds it who is in charge. Low ground near the river floods, and buildings that have taken water need their electrical systems rebuilt rather than repaired. That produces demolition-grade cable, some of it wet and some of it merely old, and it needs to be sorted before it is priced.

Between Wichita and Hutchinson, the towns of Newton, McPherson and Buhler each hold plants and elevators with their own stores of spare cable. If reels sit at more than one, list each address on the same inquiry.

What to photograph before we quote

A clear photograph beats a long description. Put the reel tag square in the frame, then take the jacket print where the size, voltage and temperature rating are molded into the surface. Add a wider shot that shows how much cable is left and whether the reel has been standing in water.

For a mixed lot, photograph each reel separately and number them. A single picture of thirty reels in a dim warehouse aisle tells us very little, and it usually leads to a second round of questions before anyone can put a number on the load. Six good photographs are worth more than twenty poor ones.

Say where the wire is and how it would be loaded. A dock with a forklift is a different job from a shed with a gravel floor and no machinery, and the difference belongs in the quote, not in a conversation on the day of collection.

• Each reel photographed on its own, with the frame numbered.
• The flange visible, so the footage written on it can be read.
• A note on whether the reel has stood in water.