A 1968 Job Shop in Ivel, Kentucky Is About to Get a Lot Bigger

A family-owned truck body maker in the small Floyd County community of Ivel announced this month that it's investing an estimated $17 million to grow its operation right where it has always been. That means dozens of new skilled trades jobs in the Eastern Kentucky mountains, built on a company that's been welding steel there since 1968.

What happened

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, according to a mid-October report in The Lane Report. The project includes additional land, buildings and machinery, and the new positions will involve welding, fabrication, CNC plasma cutting, CNC press brake operations and material handling. The Floyd County Chronicle & Times reported in late September that the company has purchased 6.5 acres of nearby property and shared its expansion plans at an open house celebration on Sept. 24. Per that same local reporting, the investment is expected to add a 110,000-square-foot facility to the existing operations in Ivel, with the new jobs paying an average wage of roughly $35 per hour.

A shop that started small

This isn't a company parachuting into the mountains. The Floyd County operation traces its roots to 1968, when it began as a small job shop serving Eastern Kentucky's coal industry. Its early market extended only a few hundred miles, with production focused on equipment for highway trucks — and it built off-highway equipment whenever local customers needed it. Today R/S-Godwin is part of the Godwin Group, one of the nation's largest family-owned trucking equipment manufacturers, and the fourth-generation, family-owned manufacturer is growing its dump truck body operation with more land, new buildings and upgraded machinery. Nearly sixty years in, the work is still happening in Ivel.

Why it matters

Sixty-five good jobs is a big number in a small place, and these are the kind of jobs that keep a trade alive — welding, fabrication, running a press brake. It's the sort of work a kid in Floyd County can learn, get paid well for, and build a life around without having to move three states away. And it's happening at a homegrown shop, not a branch office. When a company that started as a little coal-country job shop decides its best next chapter is more buildings and more machinery in the same holler where it began, that says something about the place and the people who work there.

If you love this kind of story

Eastern Kentucky is full of outfits like this — makers who stayed put, kept their heads down, and got good at something. If you're ever driving US 23 through the Country Music Highway corridor, Floyd County is worth slowing down for. And if you want to wear a little of that stubborn mountain pride, our Kentucky collection was made for exactly this feeling — the Script Kentucky Tee in particular is our quiet tip of the cap to people who make things where they're from. According to the Chronicle & Times, a formal ribbon-cutting event for the expansion is planned for the beginning of 2027, so there will be more to celebrate soon.

Common questions

Where exactly is this happening?

In Ivel, a small community in Floyd County in Eastern Kentucky. The expansion is expected to add a 110,000-square-foot facility to the company's existing operations there.

What kind of jobs are being created?

The new positions will involve welding, fabrication, CNC plasma cutting, CNC press brake operations, material handling and other manufacturing skills — 65 full-time jobs in all.

When will the expansion be finished?

Work is getting underway now. Construction will begin once the newly purchased property is vacated, and a formal ribbon-cutting is planned for the beginning of 2027.

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