THHN and THWN wire buying in Murfreesboro, Tennessee
Murfreesboro contractors buy building wire by the pallet, and they finish jobs with reels that are half used. We buy those partials by footage, not by guess.
Partial building wire reels on a warehouse floor
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.
Growth looks like pallets. A county adding schools, dormitories, restaurants and warehouses keeps electrical contractors running several crews, and each crew pulls 12 AWG and 10 AWG by the mile. At the end of a job the site is cleared, and the reels with a few hundred feet left go into a container and stay there.
Middle Tennessee State University construction adds a particular layer: projects with schedules, closeout documents and a requirement to remove leftover material from site. That material is clean, tagged and recently bought, which makes it the easiest building wire to price and the most commonly undervalued. A closeout pile is a records problem, not a condition problem.
Footage is the number that decides the offer, so measure the coil before you call.
Lot basics
- Voltage
- 600 V
- Sizes
- 14 AWG to 500 kcmil
- Market
- Rutherford County
- Typical lot
- Partial reels and coils
THHN, THWN and THWN-2 in practice
All three are 600 V building wire with a thermoplastic insulation and a nylon jacket. THHN is rated for dry locations at 90 degrees Celsius; THWN adds a wet-location rating at 75 degrees; THWN-2 carries both ratings at 90 degrees. In a supply house those distinctions matter to an inspector more than to a buyer. The print on the jacket is the only rating that counts at inspection.
Conductor is copper in most commercial work, aluminum from 6 AWG up in feeders and service entrance. Sizes run from 14 AWG to 1,000 kcmil, though the volume in a contractor's leftover pile is nearly always at the small end: 12, 10 and 8 AWG in black, white, red, green and blue, with the larger feeders on separate reels. A 500 kcmil feeder reel is a different lot from a box of 12 AWG.
Partial reels against full reels
A full reel still in its wrap is priced against the current cost of the same item, less a margin for being second-hand stock. A partial reel is priced on the footage left, the color, and whether that color and size is in demand. A 300 foot partial of black 12 AWG moves; a 40 foot partial of orange 6 AWG sits.
That is why we ask for footage and color before anything else. If a reel is unmarked we can weigh it and subtract the empty reel, or measure a coil by its dimensions and strand count. Both methods are estimates, and we say so in the offer rather than presenting a guess as a measurement. A photograph of the label plus the footage is usually enough for a firm number.
Establishing footage on a coil or a bare reel
A coil is measured, not guessed. Lay it flat, measure the outside diameter and the inside diameter, count the wraps, and multiply the mean circumference by the count. For a reel the same calculation uses the traverse width and the number of layers. A tolerance of a few percent is normal and both sides should accept it. A coil measured flat is more accurate than one measured hanging.
Weight is the cross-check. Published weight per thousand feet for a given size and insulation lets you convert a net weight into a length, and the two methods should land close together. If they do not, the reel is probably not the size the tag claims, or there is more than one size wound onto it. When the two figures disagree by a lot, trust the smaller one.
The city and the wire
Murfreesboro construction context and the building wire it leaves.
Questions on this lot type
Do you buy single partial reels or only pallet lots?
Both. A single reel of 12 AWG with 400 feet on it is a normal lot for us, and it does not need to be part of a pallet to be worth collecting. Send the size, color, footage and a photograph of the label, and we will quote it on its own.
Is aluminum THHN worth collecting?
Yes, from 6 AWG upward, though at a lower rate than copper for the same size. Aluminum building wire turns up in feeder and service work rather than in branch circuits, so it usually arrives on larger reels with clearer tags. Keep it apart from copper so neither is priced as the other.
What if the reel tag is missing?
The jacket print gives size, insulation and sometimes the length. If that is gone too, we measure the coil or weigh the reel and mark the figure as an estimate on the offer. A reel with no identification at all is bought as unidentified stock at a lower rate. That rate is lower from the start, and we say so before the truck moves.
Does a mixed pallet of colors hurt the price?
It does, because someone has to sort it before it can be sold on. A pallet of one size in one color prices highest. Where colors are mixed, we quote the pallet as mixed and note what a sorted version would be worth, so the choice is yours rather than ours.
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.
Leftover building wire in Rutherford County?
Send the sizes, colors and footage from the reel tags. A photograph of the pallet helps as well.
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