KrAZ was founded on 31 August 1945 when the People's Commissariat for Transportation Routes issued a warrant to build a mechanical bridge plant in Kremenchuk.

The first brick was laid in the plant foundation in 1946 and during the next eight years it produced about 600 bridges with the total length of about 27 km for use on the Dnieper, Moscow, Dniester, Volga and Daugava rivers etc.

On April 17, 1958, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union decided to rebuild a plant for heavy-duty vehicle production.

The first two KrAZ-222 dump trucks were assembled from imported units and components on 10 April 1959,[4] and by 1961 the plant exported over 500 vehicles in 26 countries of the world such as Argentina, Afghanistan, Bulgaria, China, India, Vietnam etc.

1999 the company's yearly production output totalled 827 trucks[10] In 2001, a block of stock being purchased by a joint Ukrainian-German enterprise called Mega-Motors.

Moreover, KrAZ partnered with the Canadian defense firm Streit Group to produce the Cougar and Spartan armored vehicles.

[18] Several Streit Group Spartan APC's were seen at the Kyiv independence day parade indicating that the order was at least partially complete.