How to read a cable reel tag before you sell

A reel tag is a small document with a short life. It is wired to a wooden flange, printed on card, and exposed to rain, sun, forklift tines and the general indifference of a yard. By the time a reel reaches us the tag is often half gone and the stencil on the flange has to carry the rest. Reading both, then checking the print on the jacket, is how a lot stops being a guess.

The tag matters commercially because identification separates inventory from recovery. A reel that can be named, sized and rated is material a crew can install. A reel that cannot be named is a weight of metal and insulation. The gap between how we price those two things is wider than any argument about condition, so twenty minutes with a camera at the flange is usually the most valuable time in the whole sale.

A printed tag wired to the flange and a stencil painted on the wood carry the same handful of facts, and the order rarely changes. Look for the manufacturer and the cable designation first, because those two together give you the construction. Then the conductor size, in AWG for the smaller cables and kcmil for the large ones, followed by the voltage class and the conductor count on a multiconductor cable. A part number, where there is one, decodes all of it through the catalog.

Two further markings matter more than most sellers expect. The footage counter, where the reel carries one, is written by the crew at the start and end of a pull, sometimes in chalk beside the arbor hole, and it records what was taken rather than what was delivered. The tare is the empty reel weight stenciled on the flange, and without it a weighed reel cannot be turned into a length at all. Both decide how a part reel is priced.

Reels also get marked by hand in the yard: a job number, a purchase order, a date, a line struck through the original length. Treat those as history rather than specification, because they were written by whoever had the reel last and nobody countersigned them. We read them because they explain why a reel is short and why it came back to the store at all, but we price from the printed data and from the conductor itself.

• Manufacturer and cable designation on the top line
• Conductor size in AWG or kcmil
• Voltage class, such as 600 V or 15 kV
• Conductor count on a multiconductor cable
• Nominal length as shipped, plus the tare weight

A tag tells you what was shipped. The counter tells you what is left.

Sun and handling take the print off a card tag within a season or two, and a stencil on a wooden flange can weather until only the shape of the letters is left. Tilt the flange into raking light and photograph it at an angle, because paint often survives in the grain after it has failed on the surface. Do not sand or wire brush the flange to make it readable. You will lose the last of it and gain nothing.

Layered labels are common on reels that have moved between jobs. A new sticker goes over the old one, and the layers describe the material's history, including which job it came from and when it came back to the store. Photograph the layers as they sit, lift a corner only if it comes away cleanly, and photograph whatever is underneath. We would rather see a photograph of the pile than a tidy flange with a single label on it.

If nothing on the reel is legible, the conductor end is what remains. The cut end shows the metal, the strand count and the shape of the assembly: a solid conductor, a stranded one, a concentric neutral, a steel core, a shield. Measure across the conductor with calipers, count the strands, and photograph the end square on with something in the frame for scale. That narrows the size and construction, though rarely to a single part number.

• Photograph the flange at an angle in raking light
• Do not sand, scrape or brush a faded stencil
• Lift an over-label only if it releases cleanly
• Measure and photograph the cut end square on