Bexar County ยท Downtown
We buy surplus cable in downtown San Antonio.
A pre-1980 office tower mid-gut has no dock, one freight elevator and an alley door, and the riser cable still has to leave before the new distribution goes in.
Call or text the buying desk954-740-1983
CountyBexar
Building stock1920s to 1980s towers
Common lotRiser and service cable
AccessAlley, freight lift, no dock
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 · Downtown
Reviewed by a buyerTell us what you have and where it sits. Nothing is moved until written lot terms are agreed.
Downtown was poured between the 1920s and the 1980s, and it was wired for the tenants of that era. When a floor plate is gutted the riser goes with it: aluminium feeder, an ageing service entrance, fire-rated cable running a corridor ceiling. Crews cut it into lift-sized bundles because the elevator is the only way down.
Those bundles are the lot we quote. Hotel refits along the River Walk add a second layer, because hospitality work replaces distribution without touching the shell, and the removed feeder leaves by the same alley it came in through. Photograph the reel faces and the tags, and a buyer will read the lot and come back with terms.
01
What a gut renovation puts in the corridor
Tower work is vertical, so cable comes down before anything else moves. A riser replacement frees the old feeder between the switchboard and the floor panels, a tenant improvement takes out the branch wiring and the MC that fed a whole floor, and a corridor re-rating pulls cable out of a ceiling being rebuilt anyway. None of it is heavy in one piece, all of it is awkward to carry, and all of it gets counted once in the same corridor.
- Service entrance from the vault
- Riser cable, 1/0 to 750 kcmil
- Fire-rated corridor cable
- MC, HCF and old BX
- Bare grounding conductor
02
The service entrance is worth photographing
Older towers were fed underground, and some of that original conductor is paper-insulated, lead-covered cable in a duct bank under the sidewalk, coming out in short pulls with the sheath split. That cable is valued on copper and footage rather than on a mill tag. A service entrance pulled during a recent switchgear swap is the opposite case, with the jacket print still legible, so keep the two apart on the pallet and they are priced apart.
03
No dock, one lift, an alley that takes a box truck
Freight access is the constraint downtown, not the cable. A 53-foot trailer will not fit the alley behind most of these buildings, and the rated load on the freight elevator decides how many lifts one reel becomes, so we send a box truck, cut reels down where cutting is safe, or work at the curb inside a lane closure your contractor already holds. Tell us the elevator capacity, the door height and the alley width before a truck is booked.
04
How a downtown lot gets priced
Value follows five things: footage left on the reel, conductor size and metal, insulation and voltage class, jacket condition, and whether the paperwork survived. Downtown lots lose on the last one, because removed cable is dragged through a demolition site and the tags go out with the debris, so tape the tags to the reel before it leaves the floor. Nothing is bought or moved until written lot terms are agreed.
- Reel tags and photographs
- Footage at manufacture
- De-energisation record
| Family | Sizes we see | Condition we buy |
|---|---|---|
| Service entrance cable | 2 AWG to 500 kcmil | New surplus, removed |
| Riser and feeder | 1/0 to 750 kcmil | Reel, cut length, pulled |
| Fire-rated and CI cable | 12 AWG to 10 AWG | Tagged surplus, removed |
| MC and HCF armour | 12/2 to 4/0 | Full and partial reel |
| PILC, lead-covered | 5 kV to 15 kV | Pulled, split sheath |
Questions
Answers before you send anything.
If your question is not here, call the desk. A buyer answers, not a call centre.
Can you collect from a building with no loading dock?
Yes. We work from the alley door, the curb or the freight lobby, and we size the truck to the access rather than the other way round. Send the door height, the elevator capacity and the alley width with your reel list.
The riser came out in short lifts. Is that still worth selling?
It is, though it prices differently from a reel. Cut lengths are bought on conductor size, metal and condition, so keep the lifts together and note the rough length of each. Mixed into demolition debris, the same copper is worth less.
Do you buy the old lead-covered cable in the duct bank?
We do, and it is the one genuinely old material downtown. It is valued on copper content and the length of the pull, so a clear photograph of the cut end and the conductor diameter helps more than the jacket print.
Does the whole floor have to be cleared at once?
No. Staged removal suits a tower better, because the lift is shared with everything else on the job. We can take the tagged reels first and return for the pulled conductor once the ceiling grid is down.
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