Blue Bird plans $300 million Fort Valley bus plant, 375 jobs

Blue Bird Corporation plans to spend an estimated $300 million turning a shuttered motorhome factory in Fort Valley, Georgia, into a 1-million-square-foot school bus plant, with construction expected to begin in the first quarter of 2027 and 375 jobs spread over the next three years, according to a release from Gov. Brian Kemp's office on Wednesday.

The company already supports more than 1,900 employees in Georgia, the release said. The new hiring lands in the same Peach County town where those workers build its buses today, with openings listed as manufacturing, operations and technician roles. Blue Bird is already directing applicants to its careers page.

The project is a conversion of a former manufacturing site, not a new facility on an undeveloped site. Blue Bird will convert a former manufacturing site for diesel-powered motorhomes at 401 Wanderlodge Way into a facility built to produce buses "of all powertrains," the governor's office said. The plant will make Type C school buses in diesel, gasoline, propane and electric versions. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution described Type C as the heavy truck-based workhorses familiar to many Georgia students and parents.

Building four powertrains under one roof is the most telling operational detail in the announcement. It suggests Blue Bird is keeping its options open on what school districts will buy rather than committing new capacity to a single technology. Kemp's own framing leaned the same way. He said the state is "proud when our long-time partners can grow and adapt to changing markets right here in the Peach State." Blue Bird says it has sold more than 25,000 propane, natural gas and electric buses.

John Wyskiel, Blue Bird's president and chief executive, cast the plant as capacity. In the state release he said the company "will continue to build more of the safe, dependable buses that school districts rely on."

The state treated the deal as contested. The Georgia Department of Economic Development called it a "competitive project" and said Regional Project Manager Candice Scott worked it with the Development Authority of Peach County and Georgia Quick Start.

The local development authority's director, BJ Walker, gave the clearest account of why the jobs matter in a rural county. He told 13WMAZ the aim is "good-paying jobs that allow them to purchase a home, a vehicle, and raise a family," and said the effect would reach "the additional restaurant worker or construction worker needed in the community." Walker, who also sits on the county board of education, argued the product line is steadier than most manufacturing. "When things are going up and down, typically people are still buying school buses," he said. That is his view, offered by an official whose job is to land and defend the project. It is not a demand forecast.

The announcement is one of several large manufacturing awards Georgia has rolled out this fall. In the weeks before Blue Bird, the economic development department's release list shows Hyundai Transys bringing 320 jobs to West Point, VDL Groep adding 120 in Hall County, MEC planning about 140 in Thomson and Pirelli committing $1.2 billion to a Georgia expansion. The awards point to a state-level factory hiring push, not a direct read on competition for Fort Valley's labor pool.

Fort Valley sits about 100 miles south of downtown Atlanta, according to the Journal-Constitution. Blue Bird, founded in 1927, approaches its centennial with 375 Fort Valley jobs scheduled across the three-year window and construction slated for 2027.