Ford in Louisville: The Assembly Plant, the Kentucky Truck Plant and 113 Years of Building Vehicles

Two Plants, One Company Town Within a City

Ford has been building vehicles in Louisville since 1913 and runs two very different factories here. Louisville Assembly Plant, known locally as LAP, sits at 2000 Fern Valley Road next to the airport on the south side of the city. Kentucky Truck Plant, or KTP, sits on 500 acres off Chamberlain Lane in the northeast corner of the city.

LAP has built passenger cars, compact pickups and small SUVs. KTP was built for heavy trucks and now builds Ford's biggest pickups and SUVs. Both are in the middle of large rebuilds. Both are listed in our directory: Ford Louisville Assembly Plant and Ford Kentucky Truck Plant.

1913 to 1955: From a Third Street Shop to the River

Ford's Louisville history starts small. A 2013 centennial report on Ford in Kentucky, published as a special advertising section by The Lane Report, says the company began in 1913 with 17 employees in a shop at 931 South Third Street. It was a "branch agency" rather than a true factory. Model Ts were shipped from Detroit partly assembled in crates, because 20 crated cars fit in a rail car compared with four finished ones, and Louisville workers put them together and sold them.

The Louisville Assembly Plant's history lists the moves that followed:

The Lane Report section adds detail on the middle years. It says the Eastern Parkway plant could produce up to 70 vehicles a day on a moving assembly line. The 1925 riverfront plant was a 350,000-square-foot building at 1400 South Western Parkway, billed at the time as "the largest building under one roof in the south." The last Louisville Model T was built on June 3, 1927, and the plant switched to the Model A. From 1942 to 1945 it built Army vehicles, including Jeeps made under a contract with Willys.

The union came in the same period. According to the same report, the UAW-CIO chartered Local 862 on June 23, 1941, as the first UAW-CIO local in Kentucky, to represent Ford production workers in Louisville.

Louisville Assembly Plant: Edsels to Escapes

The Fern Valley Road plant opened in 1955. The Lane Report says Henry Ford II and Robert McNamara, then a Ford vice president, presided over the opening, and that the larger plant grew Local 862 to 2,263 production workers building the Fairlane, the Custom, the Ranch Wagon and the F-Series pickup. Today the site covers 180 acres and about 3.15 million square feet, according to Wikipedia's plant article.

Its product list since then, per that article:

• Late 1950s: About two-thirds of all Edsels, built from 1957 to 1959, came from Louisville, along with Fairlanes, Galaxies and Sunliners.
• 1967 to 1981: The Ford LTD.
• 1973: F-Series light trucks were added alongside cars.
• 1982: After a 1981 shutdown for retooling, the plant began building the compact Ranger pickup and the Bronco II.
• 1990: Explorer production started on February 14, 1990, after a $563 million investment. The plant built its millionth Explorer by August 1993, added the Mercury Mountaineer in 1996, and replaced the Ranger with the Explorer Sport Trac in 1999.
• 2010: Explorer and Mountaineer production ended in December and moved to Chicago Assembly.

In December 2010, Ford said it would spend $600 million to retool LAP for the next-generation Escape, Louisville Public Media reported. The plan took the plant from one shift of about 1,100 workers to two shifts of about 2,900, adding about 1,800 jobs. Reprogrammable tooling in the body shop let it build up to six different vehicles at once, and Ford called it its most flexible high-volume plant in the world. State and local governments committed up to $240 million in tax incentives over 10 years, covering both Louisville plants.

Escape production began on April 4, 2012. The Lincoln MKC followed in 2014 and was replaced by the Lincoln Corsair in 2019.

Escape and Corsair production ended in December 2025. In April of that year, Spectrum News reported that roughly 2,300 workers expected temporary layoffs during the changeover. Local 862 President Todd Dunn told the station to expect an "eight to 10 month retool."

The Fathom: Louisville Becomes Ford's First Universal EV Plant

On August 11, 2025, Ford and Gov. Andy Beshear announced that Ford would invest nearly $2 billion in LAP to build an all-new electric midsize pickup. The state's announcement called it Kentucky's third-largest economic development project on record and said it would secure 2,200 existing full-time jobs. The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority approved up to $550 million in performance-based tax incentives as a supplement to Ford's existing Kentucky Jobs Retention Act agreement.

Ford's own description of the project explains the change. Instead of one long moving line, the truck is built as three sub-assemblies on separate lines that come together at the end, a layout Ford calls an "assembly tree." The front and rear are large single-piece aluminum castings. The structural battery forms the floor and is built up with seats and consoles before joining them. "We tore up the moving assembly line concept and designed a better one," CEO Jim Farley said.

Ford says the platform uses 20% fewer parts, 25% fewer fasteners and 40% fewer workstations dock to dock than a typical vehicle, and that assembly will be a net 15% faster. The plant gained 52,000 square feet for moving materials. The lithium iron phosphate battery cells come from BlueOval Battery Park Michigan, not from Kentucky.

In August 2026 the truck got a name and a price. CNBC reported that the Fathom will start at $28,350 before a $1,595 destination charge, that it is the first vehicle on Ford's Universal Electric Vehicle platform, and that preorders open in early 2027 with deliveries later that year. A week later Ford said LAP had been converted from gas to electric production in under a year, according to The Detroit News, as republished by The Spokesman-Review. Equipment installation and quality checks run through the end of 2026, and prototype production begins in the first quarter of 2027.

CNBC notes that Ford is counting on the platform to bring its Model e electric vehicle unit from multibillion-dollar losses to breakeven by 2029, at a time when EV adoption has slowed and federal consumer EV incentives have ended.

Kentucky Truck Plant: From Heavy Trucks to Super Duty

When Ford opened KTP in 1969, heavy truck production moved out of LAP, where it had run on a separate line, according to the Kentucky Truck Plant's history. The Lane Report says the original 2.4 million-square-foot building was billed as the largest truck plant in the world under one roof, opened with 3,600 new production workers, and built more than a million W-Series heavy trucks, F-Series trucks and commercial trucks within its first decade.

For nearly 30 years the plant was synonymous with big rigs. Ford's L-Series heavy trucks, later sold as the Louisville and AeroMax, took their name from the city. That business ended in 1997, when Ford sold its heavy truck technology, tooling and service parts business to Freightliner. FleetOwner reported that the deal won federal and Canadian approval in July 1997, that the trucks would be built at Freightliner's plant in St. Thomas, Ontario, and that a robotic cab assembly system "now housed in Ford's Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville" would be moved to Ohio.

The plant filled the gap with pickups. Its current product list, per Wikipedia, is:

• F-Series Super Duty, F-250 through F-550: 1998 to present
• Ford Expedition and Expedition Max: 2009 to present
• Lincoln Navigator and Navigator L: 2009 to present

The SUVs arrived in 2009. WardsAuto reported that April that Ford had finished a $200 million retooling of KTP, adding a second trim shop and a flexible body shop built with equipment from Ford's closed plant in Norfolk, Virginia. About 450 workers transferred in, mostly from LAP and from Michigan Truck, where the full-size SUVs had been built, bringing KTP to about 4,000 employees.

Bigger checks followed. In December 2015 Ford announced $1.3 billion and 2,000 jobs for an all-new body shop and retooling to build the aluminum-bodied 2017 Super Duty. In September 2022 it announced $700 million and 500 more jobs to build the 2023 Super Duty, a day Gov. Beshear declared "KenTRUCKy Day."

Today the site covers about 4.6 million square feet on 500 acres, with roughly 30 miles of conveyor and two assembly lines, per Wikipedia. Coverage of the September 2026 announcement says a vehicle comes off the line roughly every 45 seconds. In a 2023 statement quoted by WAVE, Ford said the plant's three vehicles generate $25 billion a year in revenue.

The $1 Billion Paint Shop

On September 10, 2026, Ford announced it would spend $1 billion on a new paint shop at KTP to replace the existing one. CNBC reported that Ford calls KTP its most important and profitable plant in the world, that groundbreaking was planned for later in 2026, and that a spokesperson would not say when the shop would be finished. "These investments demonstrate our confidence in Kentucky's workforce," Farley said.

Ford has not disclosed the paint technology or the contractor, GCN reported. Hoodline's report says the project sits under an incentive agreement the state amended in June 2026: up to $578 million in cumulative tax incentives, tied to $7.55 billion in total investment and to keeping up to 12,000 workers a year.

UAW Local 862 and the 2023 Strike

Local 862 represents hourly workers at both plants, about 12,500 of them in 2023, according to Dunn, the local's president, speaking to Louisville Public Media.

The local's most visible recent moment came during the UAW's 2023 Stand Up Strike against the Detroit automakers. Both Louisville plants kept running for the first four weeks. Then at 6:30 p.m. on October 11, 2023, the union pulled about 8,700 members out of KTP. UAW President Shawn Fain said, "We have been crystal clear, and we have waited long enough, but Ford has not gotten the message." Ford called the walkout "grossly irresponsible but unsurprising" and said about 9,000 of its employees worked at the plant, WAVE reported.

Workers began leaving the picket line on October 25 after Ford and the UAW reached a tentative four-year agreement with an immediate 11% raise, LPM reported. The local was split on ratification: production workers in Local 862 voted against it 55% to 45%, while skilled trades voted for it 69% to 31%, The Hill reported. One benefit from it showed up two years later, when Spectrum News reported that laid-off LAP workers would receive 70% of their normal pay during the retooling after their initial assistance ran out.

How Many People Work at Ford in Louisville

Headcounts move with launches and retooling, and sources count differently.

• Statewide: Kentucky said in August 2025 that Ford employs nearly 12,000 people in the state.
• Kentucky Truck Plant: Ford put the plant at about 9,000 direct employees in 2023. GCN and Hoodline put it at more than 11,500 in September 2026, a figure that would include workers moved from LAP during the retooling if it is accurate.
• Louisville Assembly Plant: The 2025 investment was described as securing 2,200 full-time jobs.
• Both plants: In 2022 the state said Ford had more than 12,000 people working across its two Louisville plants.

Suppliers and the Wider Economy

A vehicle plant buys most of its parts. Ford partners with 165 Kentucky-based suppliers and buys nearly $6 billion in products from them a year, according to the state's 2025 announcement. The same release cites a Boston Consulting Group analysis crediting Ford with about 120,000 direct and indirect jobs in Kentucky, more than 48,000 of them in the Louisville region, and more than $11.8 billion in state GDP. Ford also cites a 2023 University of Louisville study by Thomas Lambert that put its total economic impact in Kentucky above $33 billion, as reported by KTVU.

Those are estimates cited by the company and the state, and they include indirect effects. Together with GE Appliances, the Ford plants anchor the region's largest manufacturing segments, as we describe in Louisville's manufacturing renaissance. Our story on who supplies Appliance Park shows how a comparable parts network works and how a regional shop gets into it, and the industrial manufacturing directory lists Louisville companies in the same base.

What About the Battery Plant?

Ford's other big Kentucky project is not in Louisville. The BlueOval SK battery park, a joint venture with SK On, was built in Glendale, in Hardin County, at a planned $5.8 billion and 5,000 jobs, according to the state's 2025 release. Since then, Ford has taken over the Glendale site under a subsidiary called Ford Energy, which plans to spend about $2 billion to convert it to build battery energy storage systems, with production expected in late 2027, GCN reported.

For the region's other giant factory, read our GE Appliances and Appliance Park story. Manufacturers weighing Louisville can start with our guides to manufacturing a product here and Kentucky manufacturing incentives.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many Ford plants are in Louisville?

Two. Louisville Assembly Plant is at 2000 Fern Valley Road near the airport and opened in 1955. Kentucky Truck Plant is on Chamberlain Lane in northeast Louisville and opened in 1969. Ford has built vehicles in Louisville since 1913.

What does the Ford Louisville Assembly Plant build?

It built the Ford Escape from 2012 and the Lincoln Corsair until production ended in December 2025. Ford has since retooled it with a nearly $2 billion investment to build the Ford Fathom, a midsize electric pickup and the first vehicle on its Universal Electric Vehicle platform, with prototype production starting in early 2027 and customer deliveries expected later that year. It earlier built the Edsel, the Ranger and the Explorer.

What does the Kentucky Truck Plant build?

Kentucky Truck Plant builds Ford F-Series Super Duty pickups from the F-250 to the F-550, the Ford Expedition and the Lincoln Navigator. It built Ford heavy trucks until Ford sold that business to Freightliner in 1997. Ford calls it its most profitable plant and announced a 1 billion dollar paint shop there in September 2026.

How many people work at the Ford plants in Louisville?

Kentucky said in 2025 that Ford employs nearly 12,000 people in the state, and in 2022 it counted more than 12,000 across the two Louisville plants. Ford put Kentucky Truck Plant at about 9,000 direct employees in 2023, and the 2025 Louisville Assembly investment was described as securing 2,200 jobs. Hourly workers at both plants belong to UAW Local 862.

When will the Ford Fathom be built in Louisville?

Ford said in August 2026 that it had converted Louisville Assembly Plant for electric production, with equipment installation and quality checks running through the end of 2026 and prototype production beginning in the first quarter of 2027. Preorders are expected to open in early 2027 and deliveries later in 2027.

Is the Ford battery plant in Louisville?

No. The former BlueOval SK battery park is in Glendale, in Hardin County, not in Louisville. Ford now controls the site through its Ford Energy subsidiary and plans to convert it to build battery energy storage systems for the grid, with production expected in late 2027.