Wooden spools in Camden

Across the river from Center City

Camden faces Philadelphia across the Delaware River, joined to it by the Ben Franklin Bridge and the PATCO train. It is the seat of Camden County, and for a century it was one of the great manufacturing cities of the East Coast, known for shipbuilding, records and radios, and soup. Campbell Soup Company still has its headquarters here. Today the city's waterfront holds the Adventure Aquarium, a concert venue, offices and the battleship New Jersey, now a museum ship. Rutgers University–Camden and Cooper University Hospital anchor the downtown, and new office and residential buildings have gone up in recent years. Beyond the centre, neighbourhoods of row houses stretch east toward Pennsauken and south toward Gloucester City.

Reels from a city being rebuilt

Camden has seen a lot of new construction: corporate offices on the waterfront, university and hospital buildings, schools, housing and infrastructure. Every one of those projects uses cable, and the reels pile up in contractors' laydown areas and building basements. Typical material:

• mid-size and large nailed reels from feeders and building services;
• plywood spools of building wire and data cable;
• large reels from utility and street lighting work;
• returnable reels from cable makers and utilities.

Houses and small businesses

Much of Camden's housing is older row houses, many being renovated or rebuilt. Electricians doing that work leave spools and small reels. Corner shops and small businesses refit too. Those small pickups are collected when a truck is working the city.

Roads and the bridge

The Ben Franklin Bridge lands in downtown Camden and connects to I-676, which runs south through the city to I-76 and the Walt Whitman Bridge, and to US 30 (Admiral Wilson Boulevard), which runs east toward Pennsauken and Cherry Hill. That makes Camden one of the easiest places in South Jersey to reach from Philadelphia. A truck working Center City can be in Camden in minutes.

Industry along the river

Industrial and port land along the river north and south of downtown, including terminals, warehouses, recycling yards and plants, produces large reels from maintenance and upgrades. Port and utility reels there are often returnable; we take them only with the owner's release.

Pickups on city streets

Camden's downtown and neighbourhood streets can be tight. For a pickup:

• give the address and the nearest cross street;
• say whether the reels are in a yard, a basement or on the street side;
• note any steps;
• choose a time when parking is easiest.

Pairing with Philadelphia

Because the bridge is so close, pickups in Camden often join pickups in Center City, South Philadelphia and the river wards on the same run. That makes it easy to collect smaller loads without a dedicated trip.

Recycling

Some Camden pickups include old reels that have been outdoors for years or broken on site. They are recycled: wood to recycling, steel to scrap. See recycling.

Industrial history in the reel trade

Camden's factories once made ships, phonographs, radios and televisions, and those industries used enormous quantities of wire. The electrical heritage lingers: some of the older industrial buildings still being converted or demolished hold forgotten reels, cable racks and spool stands from earlier eras. Old reels from that kind of building can be made of thick hardwood, with cast-iron arbor plates and square nuts. They are often too worn to reuse for cable, but their timber has character, and makers sometimes ask for them for furniture. Tell us if you find any.

Schools, transit and public works

Camden has seen investment in new school buildings, transit stations, street lighting, water and sewer upgrades, and parks along the waterfront and Cooper River. Public works contracts usually require contractors to keep sites clear and to document what they remove, so reels go out regularly. We can provide a simple receipt listing what we collected, the date and the address, which helps contractors keep their records straight.

The rail and PATCO corridors

PATCO's line and the freight and light-rail tracks through the city need signal, communication and power cable. Railway contractors often use returnable reels, so expect stencils. One-way reels from the same work, released by the contractor, are welcome.

Waterfront events and staging

Concerts, festivals and ballgames on the waterfront rely on temporary power: generators, distribution boxes and long runs of heavy portable cord, usually wound on steel or plywood reels owned by rental firms. Those reels go back to their owners. What we do collect after big events are the one-way timber drums left by permanent installations: new lighting towers, ticket booths, kiosks and stage upgrades. Production managers, venue engineers and facilities crews can ring or email about anything sitting behind a fence once load-out finishes.

Neighbourhood corners

East Camden, Cramer Hill, Fairview, Parkside and Waterfront South each have their own renovation contractors and community builders. Fairview, a planned village built during the First World War for shipyard workers, has many brick homes now getting modern service upgrades.

Questions

Do you cover Gloucester City and Collingswood?

Yes, along with Pennsauken, Merchantville and the rest of Camden County.

Can you collect from a construction site on the waterfront?

Yes, with the contractor's agreement and inside the site's delivery windows.