Turning Vision into Operation

360 Rail Services
Written by Ryan Cartner

360 Rail Services is a railroad services company based in Englewood, Colorado offering construction, maintenance, engineering, operations, and logistics services throughout the United States and Canada.
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The company was established in April of 2017 by Larry Stockton and Bob Olin, now the company’s Chief Executive and Chief Operations Officers respectively. With more than 60 years of rail experience between them, the pair had a keen understanding of what the industry needed, and set out to design a service that could meet those needs.

The idea was to build a business that could offer the full suite of rail services under one roof. Beginning with the engineering and design of a project, 360 Rail would be able to carry it through to its construction and offer maintenance and operations services to help keep the project running long into the future. In just over one year, the company has already achieved a great deal of success toward this goal, and is now on track for growth going forward.

In June of its first year, 360 Rail acquired another Colorado company called Railroad Specialties, Inc. Operating out of Littleton, this new addition had been providing rail services throughout the United States since 2000. The company had built a solid reputation within the rail industry for its expertise in many aspects of the business including design and construction, inspection and maintenance, and demolition. The leadership at 360 Rail recognized this reputation as a valuable asset for a young company. In addition to the many business relationships it had developed over its seventeen years, the acquisition provided 360 Rail with something even more valuable: a team of experts representing more than one hundred years of combined experience in the rail industry.

360 Rail’s offering can be broken down into four key services: engineering, construction, maintenance, and operations. Through these four focus areas the company can meet the full breadth of needs of any of its customers. Having the capacity to perform all of these many aspects of a rail project in-house enables 360 Rail to have a high level of control over the project, resulting in a finely tuned operation in which the customer can have confidence. The 360 Rail team consists of experts in every area, providing a level of collaboration that is entirely unmatched in the industry.

360 Rail’s engineering team comprises a highly trained group of rail industry professionals. This group of experts has many years of experience and widely varied skill sets that enable the company to work on a wide range of project types including everything from railroads and rail yards to complex design/build projects including bridges and infrastructure, intermodal terminals, passenger and freight facilities, and much more. 360 Rail’s engineering team is capable of handling every possible design aspect of a rail project, from surveying a location to incorporating environmentally sustainable solutions. They have a keen understanding of how the initial design of a project is related to that project’s success, and they are committed to working closely with the customer to engineer as much value into the project as possible.

Once the engineering team has completed the initial designs of a project, the construction team can bring the operation into the build phase. Beyond the construction of new projects, this team is also in charge of a number of additional services. These include performing inspections and rehabilitating aged or damaged railroad track, emergency response in the case of a derailment, installation of rail devices, such as railroad crossing gates and junction switches, and much more. 360 Rail’s construction team members have over one hundred years of combined experience working in the rail industry on many different types of projects, but the key to what makes 360 Rail such an efficient operation is the capacity for close collaboration between the design and build groups. The construction team is in constant communication with the engineering team, enabling them to have a finely detailed understanding of the project throughout its construction.

360 Rail also has a team on staff devoted exclusively to track maintenance. Maintaining the quality of a rail line is critical for the safety of the people who ride it and the protection of freight assets that are transported on it. 360 Rail has a team of Federal Railroad Administration approved inspectors who have the expertise to assess the quality of a railroad and identify potential problems before they result in something more serious like a derailment. Proper track maintenance can save a customer a lot on expensive repair and rerail costs, and every member of 360 Rail’s maintenance group has more than two decades of experience helping customers preventatively address rail issues.

Finally, the operations team is in charge of handling various rail operations and logistics services. They have the people and the equipment required to load and unload rail cars onto and from tracks and to perform rail yard operations, which includes managing the configuration of many railcars using rail switches. They also perform transloading operations out of the NiCon facility in Evans, Colorado and the Colorado Transload facility out of Platteville, Colorado. Through these centers the company can load from rail to truck and from truck to rail, providing assistance for customers with intermodal transport needs. 360 Rail’s team of certified operations experts can also perform railcar inspections to ensure the reliability and safety of a customer’s equipment.

Beyond this, the company also provides logistics services that can help a customer gain a broader, big-picture understanding of its railroad operation. 360 Rail has only been in business for a year, but there is well over a century of combined rail industry experience within its ranks, and that experience can be applied to the optimization of any rail operation. Customers who draw on the company’s expertise in this way will see results in increased efficiency and reduced costs.

Providing all of these services in-house is an approach that has given the company an advantage among competitors, but is also one that carries with it a great deal of responsibility concerning the safety of its personnel. 360 Rail considers safety for its employees – and anyone on site at a project – above all. In order to keep its crews operating in the safest possible manner, the company provides continual and comprehensive safety training so that all personnel are employing the best practices possible at all times. The company is a member of a number of organizations that help to provide guidance for effective health and safety management. Avetta, Browz, and ISN are organizations that provide qualification training and auditing services for the company’s suppliers and contractors, enabling 360 Rail to be confident that its supply chain is consistently using best safety practices, which ensures that 360 Rail is working with safe, qualified companies. SMI Safety, meanwhile, is a consultation outfit that helps the company keep its own operation running safely. Through these organizations, the company has developed procedures to ensure the safety of its personnel, and can be confident in the safety of the overall operation.

360 Rail might be a newcomer to the rail industry, but with the acquisition of Railroad Specialties Inc., the company’s crew is made up of tenured experts in the field. The expertise that exists within the 360 team has made the company a force rivaling all competitors, and the sheer breadth of services it offers has made it the very top choice. With its first year under its belt, 360 Rail is on track for a very bright future.

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