ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Wire Cuts

I have been having some bad luck with ordering cuts of wire lately and am wondering if it is just me. A couple weeks ago we pulled a 500 ft feeder run and had some trouble. Ordered 526ft X4 500MCM and 1 #1/0 GRD. Pulled the first leg (360ft) and peeled off the rest to pull in the other direction and what do we find!? The ground is 40ft short! We are inside an operating retail store in the middle of the night, the feeders can't be spliced and there is a bunch of 500MCM laying on the floor. What are you supposed to do!? Later two separate cuts of #2 were short and one run of #4. All this cost us tons of wasted labor. The whole sale houses answer is they will give us another cut of wire but how do you get compensated for lost time and labor? I'm sure they are not going to cough it up. Oh well, that's what makes life interesting I guess.

Service is poor everywhere. I guess the wire length computer was broken that day.
I repeatedly get shipped the wrong stuff, myself. It adds excitement to a dull life!

Maybe it's to make up for the times they cut them long. (kinda like running a stop sign, and stopping twice for the next one).

Maybe they just have a derelict measuring, and 4 out of 5 is not too bad an average for him/her.

Just the results of our schools. How many times do you see cashers who cannot make change without the register doing it for them? I have a simple math test for prospective employees. Can they read a tape measure? Can they add and subtract fractions? Can they convert feet and inches to inches? Over 40% fail. I took the questions from a 1965 5th grade arithmetic book. If they cannot pass this simple 10 question test no job. It is a pity that we have so many who just do not know how to even try to do a good job, Let alone those who do not care.

yuppy;
i get this sort of service all the time ! it really tics me off. I use all the on-line & hardcopy catalogs i can to type out specific part #'s for a faxed order. They always screw up one way or another, and they could care less!!!
No volume...No voice !!!

ya know, the auto parts industry actually has an ASE certification, those parts pedalers may have had some field experience, try an' find that in our parts biz.

talk to some GC's and find out how their suppliers deal with a labor killin' order and U start to see how we are gettin' shorted here.

an' these are the same people that cry when Lowes or HD comes to town, personally...i hope they give the established suppliers a good run for thier money. HE**, they hire more experienced isle help that most of the counter help i encounter!!

Exactly the same here I'm afraid. Just the other day I had someone who couldn't work out 12 x 35 without getting a calculator out. When I said "420", he asked how I worked it out so quickly. He'd apparently never heard of mental short-cuts, i.e. 10 x 35 = 350, add 2 x 35 = 70, result 420.


We have 16-year-olds leaving school here who don't even know how many inches are in a foot! Thanks to our government's crazy drive to force everyone into using metric, apparently they no longer teach English units in our schools.

The govt. may have made it illegal for shops to sell in non-metric measurements, but the majority of British people still use feet & inches. Teaching only metric is doing our kids a grave injustice.

I am afraid even with volume it doesn't make much difference. The contractor I work for does over $150 million a year. (I think ranked 18th in the country last year in total sales) We still get hosed by the suppliers. I think in our case these are seen as small amounts of money and with everyone so busy they don't feel it's worth their time to pursue.

I must be lucky here...

Blue Grass Electric does a darn good job for their low volume of sales. Yes, I probably have to order things more often that the rest of you, but every one of those guys will bend over backwards for me... And I'm a very low volume customer... Maybe $25K per year in business.

I've never had a short lenghth of wire. Usually it is several feet too long, and the customer wants a refund for the scrap (that was "free" anyway)!...

Never had a problem with short measures here, but at the local branch of one big nation-wide supplier I amazed at how often they're out of stock of basic items, including certain sizes of cable. The branch concerned is supposed to be a "super-store" with big stocks as well!


Ever had a customer who expected you to save the 2 ft. offcuts to join together and use somewhere else in the house?

Nick, let me test my guessing

Sasco...GE Supply