  In the present paper we carry on a systematic study of 3-quasi-Sasakian
manifolds. In particular we prove that the three Reeb vector fields generate an
involutive distribution determining a canonical totally geodesic and Riemannian
foliation. Locally, the leaves of this foliation turn out to be Lie groups:
either the orthogonal group or an abelian one. We show that 3-quasi-Sasakian
manifolds have a well-defined rank, obtaining a rank-based classification.
Furthermore, we prove a splitting theorem for these manifolds assuming the
integrability of one of the almost product structures. Finally, we show that
the vertical distribution is a minimum of the corrected energy.
