Health, Safety & Environmental

A Leader in Health, Safety & Environmental

Safety is more important than ever — for companies whose products are shipped, and for the company that ships them. Rigorous safety standards protect lives and property, and help reduce liability and insurance costs. And no terminal and logistics company takes your safety any more seriously than the U.S. Development Group of Companies (USD).

USD is committed to the ongoing protection of human health, the environment and the conservation of valuable material and energy resources throughout the design and realization of its terminals. By utilizing current technologies and practices, USD eliminates or minimizes adverse impacts on the environment throughout all of its operations.

For these reasons, USD has developed a formal Safety Management System for each of our rail terminals. This dictates how safety matters are to be managed throughout the operation, defines everyone’s responsibilities, and describes the processes and procedures that will protect the safety of all of our employees and contractors. It is our intent to comply with all applicable Federal, State and local regulations and where possible, exceed those requirements.

USD is one of only a few companies to look at critical areas with the H.S.E. area and write their own Best Practice Standards. In each area, these standards not only comply with all applicable regulations within the industry but in many cases go well beyond what is required.

To achieve these goals, the company regularly undertakes risk assessments on procedures throughout the organization to ensure that each terminal is operated as safely as possible. These assessments are reviewed regularly and after incidents to seek out scope for improvements. USD will continuously seek to make these improvements to assure the company’s goal to be accident free in every area of operation.

In addition to these regular assessments, we review safety and environmental compliance across all of our rail terminals through a full H.S.E. Compliance Audit at each terminal every quarter. This critical performance measurement affords our terminal operations management team, along with the USD Safety Department, the opportunity to address critical issues and areas to continue the safe operation of all our facilities.

A Leader in Security

USD is committed to the safety and security of our employees, contractors, the customers we serve, and the public. We all are aware of the reasons that we must be more vigilant to prevent or inhibit the use of our equipment, terminals, or the products we handle by terrorists. To this end USD has put a comprehensive Hazardous Materials Security Plan into effect at each of its terminals. This comprehensive plan was developed after a Hazardous Materials Risk Assessment was performed to assure the plans effectiveness as well as to assure compliance with HM-232’s requirements. This plan is in complete compliance with all USDOT/ FRA, US Homeland Security and USCG Security Requirements.

National Safety Council

The U. S. Development Group is also a proud member of the National Safety Council. The National Safety Council is the nation’s leading safety and health membership organization. The National Safety Council is a non-for profit, charitable, international public service organization dedicated to educating and influencing people to prevent accidental injuries and deaths.

With U. S. Developments focus on rail transportation, terminal safety and our desire to create a safe and secure logistics solution for our customers, U.S. Developments participation in the National Safety Council is a natural fit.

For more information about Health Safety and Environmental Matters, please contact:

 Ron Percival, Health, Safety & Environmental Manager at (281) 291-3921 email

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