Electrical wire buyers across Metro Memphis
A river market where distribution floors, food plants and a large municipal utility keep cable moving out of stores and back onto reels, block by block.
Reels at the end of a gravel drive
Send us your reel list
Six details are enough for a first review: what the cable is, the metal, the size, the footage or reel count, the condition and where it sits. Photographs can follow by text or email. There is no fee and no obligation, and nothing moves until written terms are agreed.
Memphis is a river city with a utility that behaves like a power company of its own. Memphis Light, Gas and Water distributes inside the city, and the industrial base around it is built on distribution: warehouses, cold storage, food plants and the FedEx world hub. Dyersburg, Union City and Martin to the north add manufacturing and agricultural processing at a smaller scale. The river carries the freight, and the freight decides what gets built.
Cable in this market is often replaced rather than retired. A conveyor line is moved, not scrapped; a chiller is swapped and the feeders are reused. What we buy is the remainder: the reel opened for a repair, the service cable left after a panel change, the welding lead retired when a shop closed a bay. Send the count and the condition and we will work from that.
Coverage at a glance
- Cities covered
- Four
- Counties
- Shelby, Dyer, Obion, Weakley
- Utility
- MLGW municipal system
- Cable families
- Service cable to 69 kV
Warehouse floors, cold chain and food plants
The river belt and the counties to the north
Food and beverage plants put cable in wet rooms, so the jacket is chosen for washdown and replaced when it stops being washdown-rated. What comes out is VFD cable on conveyors and mixers, control cable for refrigeration and cook lines, SOOW cord on portable equipment, and the spare reel the maintenance shop kept for a repair it never made. A plant of any size holds several of those reels.
Distribution floors give up cable in bursts. A tenant moves out, the racking comes down, and the high-bay lighting, conveyor sorters and dock equipment go with it. Contractors who refit the same building every few years accumulate a store of tray cable and MC cut to a layout that no longer exists, plus the data cable from the office mezzanine. When the building changes hands the contractor often changes with it, which is why the leftovers stay on site.
The northern counties are a different trade. Dyersburg, Union City and Martin run fabrication, ag processing and a university, so a lot can include welding cable from a shop bay, submersible pump cable from a well, service drop wire from a farm, and MC from a laboratory renovation. Sorting that lot properly is most of the work, and most of the value. We quote the four groups separately and add them at the end.
- Washdown-rated VFD and control cable
- Tray and MC from tenant refits
- Welding cable from fabrication bays
- Pump cable and service drop from farm work
The municipal utility and what weather costs
MLGW material, storm lots and industrial substations
Memphis Light, Gas and Water runs the city's electric, gas and water systems, and its electrical stores reflect that scale. Network secondary cable from the downtown grid, service drop wire, meter loops and overhead distribution conductor all pass through the same yards. Surplus from a utility that size tends to be orderly: tagged, re-reeled and stored indoors, which is why it prices better than the same weight from a scrapyard. That order is why utility material prices better than plant scrap of the same weight.
Storm work is the opposite. Crews re-reel what can be saved, tag what cannot, and leave the rest for salvage. Conductor that has been dragged, spliced twice and left in a wet ditch is not the same material as the reel beside it, even when the tags match. We test the ends and price accordingly, and we will say which reels we are treating as salvage.
Industrial substations complete the picture. A plant fed at 69 kV holds shielded cable, bus work and grounding conductor that only moves when a yard is rebuilt. That work is planned years ahead, so the material usually appears with drawings and a cut sheet attached, and the drawings are worth more to a buyer than a verbal description of the yard. A yard rebuilt in stages releases material in stages, which suits a buyer working at this scale.
- Network secondary and service drop cable
- Overhead distribution conductor from line crews
- Storm conductor sorted by condition
- 69 kV cable, bus wire and grounding conductor
Cities covered in this market
Each page carries the county, the local industry and the cable families that move there.
Cable families reviewed here
- THHN and THWN wire600 V nylon-jacketed building wire, copper or aluminum
- XHHW and XHHW-2 wire600 V cross-linked polyethylene wire for feeders and wet locations
- Tray cableTray-rated multi-conductor cable, TC and TC-ER
- Control cableMulti-conductor cable for motor control and plant interlocks
- MC and metal-clad cableInterlocked armor cable for branch circuits and feeders
- Data centre cableTray cable, MV feeder and bus left from Nashville and Memphis fit-outs.
- Welding cableFine-stranded flexible cable for welding leads
- SOOW portable cordRubber-jacketed portable cord for plant floor use
Transmission, substation and plant cable
- Medium voltage cableShielded power cable from 2 kV to 35 kV
- Network secondary cableLarge secondary cable from downtown network systems
- Overhead distribution conductor15 kV and 25 kV overhead conductor in distribution sizes
- 69 kV cableShielded single-conductor subtransmission cable
- Utility surplus conductorSpare and obsolete conductor from cooperative and municipal stores
- Service drop wireTriplex and quadruplex service drop at 600 V
Questions from sellers in the Memphis metro
Can you price a mixed pallet of cord, welding lead and building wire?
Yes, but it prices as three lines and not as one. Cord is judged on gauge and jacket, welding lead on stranding and wear, building wire on size and insulation. A mixed pallet is normal in this market. What helps is a photograph of the pallet with the reel tags facing the camera, and a note on which items are still wrapped. Wrapped material is worth more than the same item that has been handled.
How do you deal with cable from a leased warehouse refit?
The lease usually decides the timing. Material has to be off the floor before the next tenant takes possession, so we work to that date rather than to a convenient one. Send the building address, the freight elevator or dock details, and whether the reels are palletized. Loose reels take longer to load and need more room on the trailer. A date and an address are enough to hold a slot.
Do you buy network secondary cable from utility stores?
We do. Network secondary cable is a distinct item, with more strands and a heavier jacket than ordinary service cable, and it is priced on conductor size and on whether the insulation is intact. Utility stores usually have the footage and the purchase records, and those records make the difference between a stock price and a salvage price. Where the records are missing, the scale decides.
Send us your reel list
Six details are enough for a first review: what the cable is, the metal, the size, the footage or reel count, the condition and where it sits. Photographs can follow by text or email. There is no fee and no obligation, and nothing moves until written terms are agreed.
Cable to clear in Shelby County?
Send the pallet count, the photographs and the dock hours, and we will book the load.
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