KAMAZ built a giant truck plant and a city on the Kama River
When Soviet planners chose a small town on the Kama River for a vast truck factory in 1969, about 27,000 people lived there. The complex eventually sprawled over 57 square kilometres, and Naberezhnye Chelny grew past half a million residents. Its trucks went on to win the Dakar Rally a record eighteen times.
The decision came from a 1969 resolution of the Communist Party's Central Committee and the Soviet Council of Ministers ordering a complex of heavy truck plants. Planners surveyed 70 possible sites before picking Naberezhnye Chelny, close to two navigable rivers. Ground was broken on 13 December 1969 for a plant designed to turn out 150,000 heavy trucks and 250,000 engines a year.
The scale was enormous. More than 100,000 people worked on the construction site, drawn from over 70 ethnic groups, and the town had to build housing, schools and services for them. More than 700 foreign firms, including American suppliers such as Ingersoll Rand, supplied the machinery. The city's population rose by roughly 30,000 to 40,000 people every year.
The company became known for cab-over trucks, with the cab sitting above the engine. As of 2014 it was the largest truck maker in Russia and the wider CIS, building 43,000 trucks a year, and in 2016 its revenue reached 121 billion rubles. It now leads a group of more than 110 subsidiaries and affiliates, including the NEFAZ plant in Neftekamsk, which builds buses on KAMAZ chassis. The state corporation Rostec holds 49.9% of the shares, and a small slice trades on the Moscow Exchange; in 2007 more than 76,000 individuals held stock.
Its most famous showcase is the desert. KAMAZ trucks have taken the truck category of the Dakar Rally eighteen times, more than any other manufacturer. Finances have been rockier recently: after a 3.4 billion ruble loss in 2024 and 37 billion in 2025, losses in the first half of 2026 narrowed to 21.8 billion rubles.
Source: Kamaz
