The Buckeye Mountain Story
How Buckeye Mountain is Bridging the Gap Between Operations and Technology
Efficiency, coordination, and safety are all central to the daily operations of any rail yard or terminal. But field operations leaders must address and overcome a wide range of operational challenges impacting their daily workflows and processes:
- High turnover rates limit the knowledge base and performance of rail yard staff.
- New technologies adopted to streamline operations can face resistance from frontline workers—and technological challenges in implementing these solutions can further impact their functionality and ROI.
- When operations leaders are tasked with supervising multiple sites, they often struggle to manage inventory, asset tracking, and resource allocation at scale and across multiple sites.
Three founders recognized the negative impact these operational challenges had across the rail industry. More importantly, they saw an opportunity to transform rail yard operations by bringing together their experience in the industry and technology-forward approach to create Buckeye Mountain more than fifteen years ago.
“Our intent from the start was to try and truly understand the problem to be solved, and then leverage streamlined processes and technology to solve it,” says Greg Dunnell, Principal at Buckeye Mountain. “And if it didn’t exist, we innovated and built it side by side with our customers until it met their needs.”
“That was the origin of Buckeye. We took all of those technological elements – software, hardware and wireless – and tried to put them in one place to make it easier for our intermodal/railroad customers. One hand to shake for all your technical solution needs.”
Today, Buckeye Mountain is a leading provider of end-to-end solutions for the intermodal and rail industries, providing rugged hardware, customized software, wireless network infrastructure, and robust tech support and operations consulting to rail and intermodal yards around the country.
In the past, all of these challenges were compounded with the lack of support of resource management software and solutions to alleviate this manual burden.
The Buckeye Mountain story
Most rail yards are operated by a patchwork of contracted vendors handling gate control, inventory management, safety and other critical aspects of operations.
Add to that the dozen or some companies working on the railroad itself—with each organization focused on specialized infrastructure such as locomotives, rail cars, and intermodal transportation—and it’s easy to see how the fragmentation of rail yard operations presents a challenge when trying to streamline workflows, implement operationally vital technology tools and maintain consistently efficient processes.
Buckeye Mountain was founded to address these limitations, delivering value to its customers by using technology to unify, coordinate, and optimize rail yard operations.
“When we formed in 2006, we were focused on using the ‘three-legged stool’ of software, wireless, and mobile devices to help our railroad customers get the most out of their technology investments,” says Dunnell. “We’ve continued to grow, transitioning from that starting point to where we are today.”
Leadership focused the organization’s resources and efforts on becoming an unrivaled technology leader in the rail industry.
“We believed we would gain enormous credibility by taking time to understand this market,” says Matt Hunter, Principal of Sales and Operations at Buckeye. “We made a very conscious effort to be laser-focused on our customers’ needs.”
Says Dunnell: “Early on we found ourselves competing most directly with our customers themselves because they had set up organizations within the railroads to provide these critical services. But because we were able to focus on this one specialty that aligned with our core competency, we were able to deliver more cost effective results that exceed our customer’s expectations.
“That’s how we won over our first customers—and we continued growing from there.”
A problem-solver for intermodal supply chain
As the volume of rail-based intermodal transportation has increased in recent years—fueled by the growth of e-commerce and rail’s superior cost-efficiencies over truck-based transport, among other factors—Buckeye Mountain has expanded its investments into solutions tailored specifically to the intermodal space.
Intermodal transportation presents a different set of challenges than railroad operations. Since intermodal shipping containers are moved by trucks, trains, ships, and cranes, and can be stacked several units high for compact storage, Wi-Fi connectivity and communication becomes more complex. Likewise, the technology deployed into these environments must be durable enough to withstand rugged conditions.
Buckeye Mountain addressed these limitations by developing new mobility solutions tailored to the unique needs of intermodal transport.
“We have a patented, unique way of deploying, maintaining, and guaranteeing wireless connectivity inside of those very difficult intermodal environments,” says Dunnell. “We solve the problems that others can’t because we live in those environments 100 percent of the time.”
Expanding into marine operations
In recent years, Buckeye Mountain’s core competencies as a rail and intermodal solutions provider have served as a bridge connecting the company to inland and port customers.
Many of the core offerings utilized by intermodal customers—including Buckeye’s Rapid Deploy Wi-Fi coverage solutions and its “boots on the ground” approach—are relevant to the pain points commonly faced by marine terminal operations. With supply chain operations encompassing multiple modes of transportation, the technology used to manage and streamline those operations is blurring the lines of differentiation that have historically kept them separate.
For Buckeye Mountain, this isn’t about “blurring the lines”—it’s about leveraging proven technologies in new environments.
“While we may move into a new area of the business, we’re able to leverage things we’ve done in the past to bridge that gap,” says Matt Gretz, Principal of IT & Software Development at Buckeye Mountain. “Seventy percent of the new solution might be something we’ve already done for a different project, so our customers trust us to take on new challenges.”
Buckeye delivers the hardware, the software, and the technical support
Successful digital transformation requires an end-to-end approach. That’s why Buckeye Mountain isn’t simply a solutions vendor, with a consultative approach with each customer, identifying solutions to address their most urgent pain points and ensuring success through proper implementation, onboarding, and ongoing support.
Here are three key cornerstones of that customer-centric approach:
Wireless network infrastructure
Traditional wireless providers prioritize consumer needs over the vital connectivity required by rail terminals. Buckeye Mountain equips rail, intermodal, and marine operations with reliable connectivity delivered through a patented, unique infrastructure built for challenging intermodal outdoor environments.
The Rapid Deploy family of products, including RapidSky, provides consistent Wi-Fi coverage even in difficult settings such as high-stack intermodal areas and marine ports. These custom-built solutions can overcome environmental interference, optimize signal patterns and connectivity, and monitor Wi-Fi connection quality for enhanced connectivity and a better user experience.
Boots on the ground
High turnover rates, combined with an underutilization of new technologies and tools, can undercut the impact and value of new technology investments. Buckeye is changing this status quo by offering operator services that staff terminals with Buckeye personnel who can serve as adept operators and knowledgeable custodians of this new technology.
This “boots on the ground” approach is Buckeye’s solution to reducing the impact of high staff turnover and the expertise gaps common among operations teams, ensuring seamless operation of these new technology investments.
Rail, intermodal, and marine logistics expertise
Buckeye’s field support services are designed to provide comprehensive, hands-on assistance during critical technology implementations and ongoing operations.
During TOS go-live events, for example, Buckeye supplements client resources with rugged, field-ready personnel who can train operating personnel, manage installations and logistics while providing post-implementation troubleshooting. They also offer staffing and operator services to provide skilled personnel for TechOps roles such as load planners, gate clerks, and field maintenance workers to terminals with long-term contracts.
Transform your operations with fit-for-purpose technology
Technology holds the key to streamlining workloads and realizing cost-efficiencies across rail, intermodal, and marine operations. But operations personnel can’t simply be handed a new tool and documentation and be expected to get the most out of it.
They need to be trained and truly understand the value of new technology investments—and to take ownership over their implementation.
That’s where Buckeye Mountain sets itself apart.
“As we are expanding we are hitting more competition,” says Dunnell. “But what we are trying to do, very deliberately, is to do things a little bit differently in the best interest of our customer. We want to expand the role of the operator to make them the custodians of the operationally critical technology tools being deployed.”
It’s time to stop drawing a line between operations and technology. Buckeye Mountain can help bring them together for a seamless fit that streamlines your workflows and maximizes the return on your technology investment.