42-inch cable reels: heavy enough to need two people

The weight changes the job

Below 40 inches most reels can be carried. From 42 inches up they cannot, safely, by one person. Southwire’s A-29 is listed at 154 pounds and its C-22, with the heavier drum, at nearly 167. That matters for both sides of the desk. A seller needs a forklift, a pallet jack under a skid or a ramp to get them onto a truck. A buyer collecting one for a patio in Silver Spring needs a second person and a vehicle with a low bed.

What it carries

The A-29 is an A-series reel, the family Southwire builds for bare aluminium and ACSR, so on utility work in Prince George’s or Charles County a 42-inch reel is often overhead conductor. The C-22 is a C-series copper reel. On data-centre and commercial work the 42s carry larger copper feeders and multi-conductor cable.

Take-back

Size is not the problem at 42 inches: it clears the 30-inch minimum in AFL’s and Service Wire’s rules. The count is. Sonoco lists 120 reels as a full truck at this size, and Service Wire will only take its own labelled reels. A yard holding thirty 42-inch reels from three different makers has no maker program that fits. Tell the desk the brands and the count.

What it suits once empty

Stood on a flange, the A-29 and N-34 are 32 to 33 inches high with a 42-inch top: a counter-height outdoor table, or a dining table if you trim a little height. Event planners use them as cocktail tables. On a farm, a 42 takes heavy fence wire or a long garden hose run. For re-spooling, a 42-inch reel needs a proper reel stand, not a pipe across two sawhorses.

Before you request one, measure the doorway and the vehicle: 42 inches is 3½ feet across.

Published dimensions at and near 42 inches

Three Southwire reels share the 42-inch flange; the drum runs from 17 to 24 inches, which changes how much cable they hold and how they stand as a table.

Reading the numbers

Flange

The diameter of the round end, edge to edge. The size a reel is known by.

Traverse

The inside width between the flanges, where cable winds. It sets how tall the reel stands on end.

Drum

The diameter of the barrel the cable winds onto. Stiff power cable needs a big drum.

Arbor hole

The centre hole for a shaft. 3⅛ in on most wooden reels; 5¼ in and up on heavy steel ones.

Weight

Empty, or tare, weight in pounds as the maker publishes it. A tag on the reel gives the same figure.

Series letter

Southwire codes the build: A and C nailed, N plywood or nailed, E and G plywood, S steel.

Where 42s turn up here

Utility yards in Prince George’s and Charles, where A-series aluminium reels come off distribution work, and data-centre sites in Loudoun, where copper feeders arrive on C-series reels. Check the drive holes on a 42 before you count it: they are the small holes near the arbor where a reel stand’s pin turns the reel, and a torn one fails both AFL’s and Service Wire’s rules.

Requests for 42-inch reels

Selling or clearing

A sound nailed 42-inch reel meets the size rules of the programs we have read; count by brand first in case one maker's reels fill a truck (120 at this size, by Sonoco's table). Send the desk the rest.

Buying

Say how it will come off the truck. At this size two people or a machine are needed.

Empty weight to plan for

114 to 167 lb