Areas · county desk
Reel pickup in Montgomery County: the I-270 corridor and the inner suburbs
ROCKVILLE, Md. — The desk collects empty cable reels and delivers wooden spools across Montgomery County, from Silver Spring and Takoma Park on the District line out along I-270 to Germantown. Reels here come mostly from commercial, laboratory and residential building, with utility work threaded through.
From the reel desk · Checked 9 November 2026
Schematic line map, not to survey: Montgomery County marked, with I-270, I-95 drawn heavier. The Potomac, the Anacostia, the District line and the Beltway are drawn for bearings.
Fact box: Montgomery County
- Electric utilities
- Pepco (most of the county), Potomac Edison and BGE (portions)
- Main corridors
- I-270, Capital Beltway, Route 355, US-29
- Federal-employee residents
- About 54,000 (Comptroller of Maryland)
- Town pages
- 5
A building county
Montgomery has little heavy industry and a great deal of construction. Mid-rise apartments around Metro stations, laboratory and office space along the I-270 corridor, schools, and the steady renovation of older suburbs produce a mix of reels that is different from the counties east and south. You see many 23 to 36 inch reels from building wire and branch circuits, plywood reels from building wire makers, and a fair share of larger reels where a lab or data room needed big feeders.
Federal and research campuses
The county is home to large federal campuses: the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, and the Food and Drug Administration at White Oak. The Comptroller of Maryland counts about 54,000 Montgomery residents who work for the federal government. Federal facilities renovate and expand on long cycles, and the electrical and communications contractors who work on them are steady sources of empty reels.
Utilities
Maryland’s Office of People’s Counsel lists Pepco as the utility for most of Montgomery, with Potomac Edison serving portions of the county and BGE serving parts. Utility work here is mostly distribution: new services, undergrounding, replacement of aging cable. That brings aluminium conductor on A-series reels and secondary cable on smaller ones.
How pickups work here
Montgomery has fewer open yards than Prince George’s and more job sites where reels sit in a parking structure or a corner of a site. Expect the desk to ask about access: the height of a garage entrance, whether the reels are on a level slab, whether a forklift is on site. For a site with several buildings going up in sequence, a pickup at each building’s close-out often works better than one big clear-out.
Who buys reels in the county
Montgomery’s Agricultural Reserve, in the north and west of the county, has farms and nurseries that use large reels for hose, fencing and irrigation line. Closer in, the demand is for table-sized reels for patios and decks, and for working reels for small electrical contractors who wind their own lengths.
Corridors
Most pickups run along I-270 and the Beltway. Route 355 (Rockville Pike and Frederick Road) and US-29 (Colesville Road) carry the trips between them. Germantown and Olney sit at the outer edge of the county’s built-up area; beyond them the roads are rural and reels travel well on a flatbed.
Town pages
Five Montgomery towns have their own pages: Olney, Gaithersburg, Rockville, Silver Spring and Germantown.
Sending a request from Montgomery County
- Count and measure. Count the reels and measure the largest flange edge to edge across the face. A photo with the tape in it is better than a guess.
- Check the build. Nailed lumber, plywood sheet, steel or plastic. Look for a stencil or tag naming the maker and the reel number.
- Set aside steel and tagged returnables with their serial numbers. Those go back to the maker, not to the desk.
- Say where they stand: yard, dock, garage level, alley or curb, plus clearance, gate hours, badging or escort a driver needs.
- Say what loads them: forklift, pallet jack, loader, ramp, or only people. Reels over 42 inches weigh more than 100 lb empty.
- Say how often: one time, weekly, monthly or at each job close-out.
- Buying instead? Give the flange and height you want, how many, and how the reel gets from the truck to where it will sit.
- No form handy? Email info@dcwoodenspools.com with the same details and a few photos.
Reels you are likely to have
| Reel | Build | Flange | Traverse | Drum | Lb | Usually carries |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C-5 | Nailed wood | 23 | 17 | 12 | 34 | Copper building wire, grounding |
| A-10 | Nailed wood | 30 | 22 | 16 | 66 | Service drop, bare aluminium |
| N-24 | Nailed wood | 36 | 28 | 14 | 83 | Insulated and multiplex cable |
| A-29 | Nailed wood | 42 | 28 | 21 | 154 | Overhead conductor, feeders |
| A-38 | Nailed wood | 48 | 28 | 24 | 212 | Aluminium and ACSR, large feeders |
| A-62 | Nailed wood | 60 | 28 | 28 | 397 | Utility conductor |
| A-76 | Nailed wood | 66 | 28 | 30 | 473 | Heavy conductor |
| S-120 | Steel, returnable | 84 | 36 | 42 | 895 | Transmission and medium voltage |
Other makers' reels differ by an inch or two. All flange sizes · How to measure
Questions the desk gets
Does the desk collect from a parking garage?
Often, yes, if the clearance allows a truck or the reels can be rolled to the entrance. Send the clearance height with the request.
Are plywood reels from building wire accepted?
Yes. No maker program we know of takes plywood reels back, so they come to the desk for reuse or recycling.
Sources
Each opened and read on 9 November 2026.
- Maryland Office of People's Counsel, Your Local Electricity Companies: which utility serves which Maryland counties
- Maryland Office of People's Counsel, Pepco: Pepco serves 582,000 Maryland customers in most of Montgomery and Prince George's
- Comptroller of Maryland, Impact of the Federal Government on Maryland's Economy (June 2025): $46 billion in federal contracts for work in Maryland in fiscal 2024; Defense and HHS 60%; third per capita