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Jobs To Nearly Double At Ford Northland Truck Plant

Dan Verbeck
/
KCUR

One of the most poorly kept secrets in the auto industry was completely revealed Thursday. Ford Motor Company will add some 2,000 jobs at its Kansas City Assembly Claycomo plant.

Little time will lapse before job interviews and hiring.

Industry analysts and business reporters knew Ford would be growing in Kansas City. Only the numbers remained quietly held.  

Top Ford executives went to the plant to say the truck factory will no longer be idle on parts of weekends.  Nine hundred new workers will be on board. 

Local manager Dan Jowiski said aptitude tests for applicants are nearby, in fact, “that testing will begin in early May, as early as next week.”

The expansion of production time will solely involve the F-150 pickup truck.

The plant now has 2,450 hourly assembly workers, building trucks in two shifts.

Doug Scott, Ford’s Truck Marketing chief boasted U.S. sales of the F-series trucks rose 24 percent in April of this year. 

Ford will hire an additional 1,100 workers to build the new-to-America Transit van.  Its assembly line is under construction. It is scheduled to begin turning out vans in 2014.

Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon spoke to Ford executives and employees. He took credit for pushing passage of the Missouri Manufacturing Jobs Act in 2010 to boost creation of jobs in the auto industry and elsewhere.

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