A Floyd County Truck Body Shop Is Doubling Down on Eastern Kentucky

Here's a piece of news worth your coffee break: a family-owned truck body manufacturer in Floyd County, Kentucky is putting roughly $17 million into expanding its hometown operation instead of moving it anywhere else. R/S-Godwin Truck Body Co. plans to invest an estimated $17 million to expand its manufacturing operations in Floyd County, creating 65 full-time jobs and increasing production capacity — and the announcement came just this week, in mid-October, as reported by The Lane Report.

What happened

On October 12, The Lane Report covered the expansion plans of R/S-Godwin, a fourth-generation family-owned manufacturer continuing its investment in Eastern Kentucky. This isn't a ribbon-cutting for a warehouse full of robots, either. The project will include additional land, buildings and machinery, and the new positions will involve welding, fabrication, CNC plasma cutting, CNC press brake operations, material handling and other manufacturing skills — real trades, done with your hands, in the county where the company grew up. The company is also in the early stages of acquiring more than seven adjacent acres to make room for future growth. They're not just expanding; they're planning to keep expanding.

A shop that started small

The backstory is the good part. The Floyd County company traces its roots to 1968, when it began as a small job shop serving Eastern Kentucky's coal industry. Nearly six decades later, R/S-Godwin is part of the Godwin Group, one of the nation's largest family-owned trucking equipment manufacturers. Per WEKU's reporting on the announcement, the Godwin Group makes things like dump truck bodies and hoists — the unglamorous steel that keeps every construction site, quarry, and county road crew in America moving. Four generations into it, the family is still betting on the same hills where the first shop opened.

Why it matters for Eastern Kentucky

Jobs announcements come and go, but the details here are worth reading twice. WEKU reports that the terms have the positions paid $35 an hour with benefits for 15 years. That's the kind of wage that lets somebody stay in the place they're from — buy the house, coach the team, fix up the truck — instead of driving two hours away or leaving altogether. And it's skilled work: welders and fabricators learning a trade they can carry their whole lives. When a company that started as a little job shop keeps choosing its home county over and over for almost sixty years, that's not a press release. That's a promise with a paper trail.

If you want to root for them

You don't have to work a press brake to cheer this on. Floyd County sits in the heart of Eastern Kentucky's mountain country, and the whole region rewards a slow drive — small towns, switchback roads, and people who will talk your ear off in the best way. If you find yourself out that way, spend a little money locally; that's the whole engine of a story like this one. And if Kentucky has a permanent spot in your heart like it does ours, our Kentucky collection was made for exactly this kind of pride — the quiet, durable kind. The Script Kentucky Tee says it plainly, which feels right for a state where a 1968 job shop can grow into a national manufacturer without ever leaving home.

Common questions

What does R/S-Godwin actually make?

R/S-Godwin is part of the larger Godwin Group, a truck equipment manufacturer that makes things like dump truck bodies and hoists — heavy-duty equipment for work trucks. As demand increased over the years, the company discontinued trailer production to concentrate on dump bodies.

How many jobs is the expansion creating?

The expansion is expected to create 65 full-time jobs while increasing production capacity for the Eastern Kentucky trucking equipment manufacturer. The new jobs will be in skilled labor fields such as welding, fabrication and material handling.

When was this announced?

The expansion was announced on October 12, 2026, and covered by The Lane Report, WEKU and other Kentucky outlets in mid-October. The expansion will require the company to purchase more land, construct buildings and buy machinery, so expect this to be a story that unfolds over the next few years.

Reported by The Lane Report. Details as published at the time of writing.