Ross County · Southeast Ohio
Chillicothe specialty paper mill and campus cable buyers
Ross County's largest private electrical load sits on the Scioto flats at a specialty paper mill, and its largest building complex is a medical campus that is never empty.
Request a quote
Request a quote in Chillicothe
Tell us the wire type, the quantity and where it is stored.
- Reviewed by a buyer, not a scale
- Reels, pallets, partials or a full truckload
- Anywhere in Ohio, one desk
- 01Send the wire type, quantity and pickup city.
- 02A buyer reviews the lot and replies with a basis.
- 03Freight and release are agreed, then the load is booked.
Lot details
Everything helps, but the wire type, the quantity and the pickup city are enough to start.
The paper machine and its drives
A paper machine is a continuous line of large motors under tight speed control. The cable that matters is the drive cable: shielded, run in parallel from the drive cabinet to the motor, often for a long distance. Change a drive and a few hundred feet of shielded cable becomes surplus by the end of the shift.
Wet-end conditions age cable quickly. Steam, humidity and the occasional stock spill get into cabinets, and the tray above the machine holds cable that has been warm and damp for years. Inspect the shield drain and the jacket at the low point of every run, not at the top where it looks fine.
Instrumentation on a mill scale
Paper mills are instrument heavy: basis weight, consistency, temperature and flow loops, all on shielded twisted pair. When a section is rebuilt the old instrument cable is pulled and usually coiled rather than cut, because nobody wants to cut a run that might be needed again.
Coiled instrument cable is reviewed by the coil, not by the reel. A hundred-foot coil with the shield intact and the print legible can be re-sold. A coil that sat in a puddle with a corroded shield is a scrap question with a small premium for the copper.
The medical campus and phased work
Work on a hospital campus happens around patients. Contractors work nights and weekends, in phases, behind temporary partitions, and the material they leave behind is stored where it can be locked rather than where it is convenient for a truck.
Expect metal-clad cable and data cable rather than reels of feeder. Expect the escort question, the badge question, and a rule that nothing is staged in a corridor. A campus lot is small, clean and usually well documented, which makes it quick to value once access is agreed. Establish which building and which phase early, since a campus has more locked rooms than loading docks.
Tool rooms, grain and the Scioto flats
Agricultural processing and the tool and die trade fill in the rest of the county's surplus. Grain handling brings augers, fans and dryer controls; tool rooms bring small reels and portable cord. Neither is large on its own, and both are easy to combine.
River-flat siting is the shared risk. Plants on the Scioto have been through high water, and cable stored at floor level in a low building has probably been wet at least once. Elevation and pallet height tell you most of what you need to know before a reel is even moved.
- Auger and dryer motor leads
- Portable cord off grain legs
- Part reels of building wire, tool room
- Submersible cable from a sump
- Control cable from a rebuilt panel
Related pages
Adjacent cities, wire families and regional briefs.
Questions sellers ask
Do you buy VFD cable from a paper machine drive?
Yes, and it is one of the more useful things a mill releases. Shielded drive cable is expensive to buy and it holds value when the shield and drain are intact. The usual problem is length: a run cut out of a line is often too short for the next drive, so footage decides more than condition.
Can a lot be removed from a hospital campus during the day?
Rarely without arrangements. Campus work is scheduled around patients, which usually means evenings, nights or a weekend window, with a service route agreed in advance. The material itself is straightforward. The scheduling is the part that needs planning.
Is coiled instrument cable worth more than scrap?
When the shield is continuous and the print is readable, yes. Twisted-pair instrument cable in decent lengths is bought for re-use rather than for copper, so a coil with a crushed shield or water inside the jacket drops back to metal value quickly. Photographs of both ends answer the question.
What if the cable was in a building that flooded?
It is treated as wet and valued accordingly, with no assumptions about the inside of a jacket. Cable that was fully submerged is usually a conductor lot unless it is a construction that tolerates water. Say how high the water reached, since that tells us more than the fact of flooding.
Request a quote
Tell the desk what you have in Chillicothe
Send the basics and a buyer reviews the lot, usually the same working day.
- Reviewed by a buyer, not a scale
- Reels, pallets, partials or a full truckload
- Anywhere in Ohio, one desk
- 01Send the wire type, quantity and pickup city.
- 02A buyer reviews the lot and replies with a basis.
- 03Freight and release are agreed, then the load is booked.
Second look at the lot
Everything helps, but the wire type, the quantity and the pickup city are enough to start.