Herzog

Herzog is a family-owned heavy-civil and rail contractor based in St. Joseph, Missouri, founded in 1969. The firm builds and maintains passenger and freight rail across North America, and it operates transit systems for public agencies once the track is in the ground. That rail specialty is what earned Herzog a place on the joint venture, alongside Kiewit and Stacy Witbeck, selected to build a roughly 119-mile track-and-systems segment of California’s high-speed rail between Bakersfield and Merced. Herzog’s work spans track construction, signaling, grade crossings and transit operations, the full life of a railroad from build to run. The company has grown from a regional contractor into one of the country’s go-to rail builders.

Herzog began in 1969 as an asphalt paving contractor in St. Joseph, Missouri, and grew into one of the country’s go-to rail specialists, a family-owned company now numbering more than 2,300 people across the U.S. and Canada. Its work covers the full life of a railroad: track construction, signaling, grade crossings, and heavy civil work on the build side, then operations and maintenance once the line is running.

That operations business is sizable in its own right; Herzog runs transit systems for public agencies at more than a dozen properties. The company also fields specialized services the broader rail industry relies on, including ultrasonic rail testing, ballast distribution, material handling, and railcar leasing and repair. Building track and then operating what it builds is what positions Herzog for large passenger-rail programs, where a single contractor able to handle both is an advantage.