48-inch cable reels: the four-foot reel

Why the four-foot reel

Ask the desk for a “big wooden spool” and nine times out of ten the picture in your head is a 48. It is tall enough on end to stand at bar height, wide enough to seat four, and common enough that one turns up from most large electrical jobs. The A-38 is an A-series reel in Southwire’s scheme, for bare aluminium and ACSR, and the same 48-inch flange appears on copper feeder and medium-voltage cable from other makers.

On the seller’s side

At 212 pounds empty and with a 3⅛-inch arbor hole, a 48 is still a reel that a crew can roll into a row and a forklift can lift with forks under both flanges. It clears every published size rule. What it rarely clears is the truckload: Sonoco lists 100 reels as a full load at 48 inches. If you are a Lanham or Sterling distributor branch clearing returns, or a contractor closing out a Manassas job with twenty of them, the maker program is not built for you.

Handling

• Roll it only on firm ground, in the direction the arrow on the flange shows.
• Lift with forks under both flanges, or with a shaft through the arbor hole and a spreader bar. Never with a sling around one flange.
• Store standing on its flanges on timbers, never lying flat; a flat reel collects water on the lower flange and the plies start to part.

What it suits once empty

Stood on a flange, an A-38 is 32 inches high with a four-foot top, a big outdoor table. Garden centres and event planners use 48s as display stands. Farms use them for heavy wire and for poly pipe. They do well as re-spooling reels for contractors who want to cut cable to length from bulk.

For a buy request, tell the desk whether you need the reel standing tall (look for a wide traverse) or low and broad (a narrow one).

Published dimensions at and near 48 inches

The Southwire A-38 and Sonoco's load-table reel have the same 48 × 28 × 24 proportions, which is as close to a standard four-foot reel as the published tables get.

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 48s turn up here

Utility and data-centre work, larger commercial jobs, and distributor branches in Lanham and Sterling clearing returns. The 48 is also where lagging starts to appear: wooden boards across the flange rims that protect the cable. Lagging comes off at the job and usually ends up in the same pile as the reels; sound boards are worth keeping with them. Pull any loose nails or staples first, so nobody loading the truck catches a glove on them.

Requests for 48-inch reels

Selling or clearing

A sound nailed 48-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 (100 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

about 198 to 250 lb