Industrial ยท Demolition
We buy cable from facility demolition.
A demolition contractor sees cable as a scheduling problem long before it is a material problem: it is worth the most before the machine starts and the least after the pile is mixed.
Call or text the buying desk954-740-1983
WindowStrip before structural
SortingCopper, aluminium, steel
Typical lotPallet to roll-off
ConstraintDemolition sequence
Get a buy quote
Send the reel list. A buyer reads it.
Six details are enough to start. Tags and photos can follow by text or email once a buyer has looked at the basics.
- A buyer reviews the lot: construction, footage and condition, not only metal weight
- Copper and aluminium, 600 V building wire through 345 kV cable
- Full reels, partial reels, cut lengths, pallets and truckloads
- No fee, no obligation, and no automatic pickup
Reel list · Demolition Cable
Reviewed by a buyerTell us what you have and where it sits. Nothing is moved until written lot terms are agreed.
Demolition runs in phases: abatement first, then soft strip, then structural removal. Cable comes out during the strip, while there is still a building to walk through and a floor to coil it on, and the window closes earlier in the job than most crews plan for. Reaching it afterwards means picking it out of debris.
That distinction decides everything about the lot. Cable stripped from a ceiling before the grid comes down is clean, dry and labelled. Cable recovered from a mixed pile is tangled with conduit, ceiling wire and dust, and it is bought as a sorting job, which is a slower and cheaper business than buying cable.
01
Strip before you push
Every hour a machine sits waiting is money gone, and cable removal is slow manual work that holds up the sequence when it is left to the end. Crews that do well at this treat the strip as a phase with its own labour, not as something to pick up in a gap.
- Service entrance and switchgear feeder at the point of entry
- Riser and busway feeder between floors
- Tray and conduit runs above ceilings and in plant rooms
- Branch circuit conductor pulled back to the panel
- Welding leads, cords and portable cable from shop areas
02
Contamination decides the load
Old buildings hold things that are not cable: mastic, lagging, fire caulk, oil in a pit, water in a vault, and sometimes material that an abatement crew has to deal with before anyone else enters. A load visibly coated in any of it will be treated as suspect until it is shown otherwise.
That is a delay rather than a rejection. Cut the ends clean, keep the cable off the floor, and separate anything that came out of a wet or burnt area so it can be looked at on its own.
- Cable from a wet vault or a flooded pit
- Cable with visible mastic, lagging or fire caulk
- Burnt or heat-damaged conductor from a fire area
- Cable pulled through asbestos-containing debris
03
Mixed loads cost money in sorting
Copper and aluminium cannot be weighed together, and steel armour cannot be weighed with either. A roll-off that holds all three is a sorting job at the yard, and the sorting is paid for out of the lot.
Two pallet groups and a scrap pile solve most of it. Copper conductor in one, aluminium in the other, armour, conduit and hardware in the third. It takes an extra hour on site and it changes the quote.
04
Scheduling the pickup against the sequence
Agree the pickup date against the demolition sequence, not the calendar. A strip that finishes Tuesday and a machine that arrives Wednesday leaves no room to load. The workable pattern is to stage the cable outside the push zone, on pallets, and have the truck arrive while the gate still takes a trailer.
Tell us the gate width, whether the ground is paved, and whether a forklift is on site. Those three answers decide whether the load is a trailer, a box truck or a lift gate and a long carry.
| Location | Usually found | How it comes out |
|---|---|---|
| Main switchgear room | Service entrance and feeder | Cut at the lugs, coiled |
| Riser shafts | Feeder and busway | Pulled, or cut by floor |
| Above ceilings | Tray, MC, branch circuits | Stripped with the grid |
| Mechanical rooms | Motor feeder and control | Disconnected, then pulled |
| Shop and yard | Welding leads and cords | Rolled and banded by hand |
Questions
Answers before you send anything.
If your question is not here, call the desk. A buyer answers, not a call centre.
The building comes down next week. Is it too late?
Not if the strip has not started. What matters is whether the cable can still be reached and staged outside the push zone. If the ceilings are already down the lot is still buyable, but it reads as mixed recovery rather than as cable.
Can the roll-off come straight to you?
A roll-off is the right container for a strip and the wrong one for cable, because the cable ends up under everything else. If it has to go in a roll-off, load it last or keep it in the front third so it can be lifted out cleanly.
Does armoured cable count as copper?
It counts as copper with work attached. The armour has to be separated from the conductor, and the value of the piece reflects that. Loose MC and BX in a heap is still worth buying, but it is bought as a sorting job.
What if the site has no power for a forklift?
Then the load is planned around that: a lift gate, a ramp, carrying to the curb, or staging next door with the owner's permission. Say what equipment is on site when the pickup is booked, not when the truck is already at the gate.
Keep reading
Related pages
No fee · no obligation
You have the cable. We have a scale and a check.
Send the reel list, the tags or a photograph of the pallet. A buyer comes back with what the lot is worth and how pickup would work, before anything is moved.
954-740-1983 Call or text
- Reel tags, or the print on the jacket
- Reel count and footage, even roughly
- Where it sits and what can reach it
- Whether the cable is still energised