Ford Motor Co. plans to invest $1 billion in a new state-of-the-art paint shop at its Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, continuing a wave of major capital investments across the company’s Kentucky manufacturing operations. The new facility will replace the plant’s existing paint shop, with groundbreaking expected by the end of 2026.
The Kentucky Truck Plant currently produces Ford Super Duty F-250 through F-550 trucks, the Ford Expedition and Lincoln Navigator, with approximately 8,900 employees as of June. The $1 billion project is part of a broader Ford commitment to Kentucky manufacturing, which encompasses roughly $5 billion in total investments announced across three major facilities.
“For more than a century, Ford and Kentucky have grown together, and we’re investing to ensure that relationship remains strong for generations to come,” Ford President and CEO Jim Farley said. Ford’s Kentucky operations date to 1913, when the first Model T rolled off a Louisville production line, and the company now employs more than 11,500 people across the commonwealth.
The Kentucky Truck Plant investment comes alongside approximately $2 billion being invested to transform Louisville Assembly Plant for Ford’s Universal EV Platform and production of the Ford Fathom midsize electric pickup, expected to reach customers in 2027. That project is expected to secure approximately 2,200 hourly jobs and allow the plant to assemble the electric truck about 15 percent faster than previous production processes.
Ford also announced plans for approximately $2 billion in investment at Ford Energy Systems in Glendale, Kentucky, transforming a former battery manufacturing site into a large-scale producer of battery energy storage systems. The project is expected to create at least 2,100 jobs and begin production in late 2027.
Governor Andy Beshear called the Kentucky Truck Plant investment a demonstration of automotive manufacturing’s continued importance to the state’s economy. “Ford is a central part of Kentucky’s story, which continues to show the world that American manufacturing remains strong,” Beshear said.
Sources
This article was generated by AI (claude-haiku-4-5-20251001) based on source material from Lane Report (KY Business). The original source is available at https://www.lanereport.com/189357/2026/09/ford-kentucky-truck-plant-1-billion-investment-louisville/.
