May 1 (Bloomberg) — Ford Motor Co., boosted by record profits in North America, is likely to hire more than the 12,000 new workers that it promised in its 2011 contract with the United Auto Workers, according to its top American executive.

"The business has grown faster than we predicted it would in 2011," Joe Hinrichs, Ford's president of the Americas, said in an interview yesterday. The company's hiring "is definitely ahead of schedule and there's a high probability we'll overshoot" the 12,000 hourly jobs it committed to create in the 2011 contract.

The second-largest U.S. automaker said yesterday it hired 2,000 new workers at its Claycomo, Missouri, factory, where it is investing $1.1 billion to add production of the Transit cargo van to the F-series trucks the plant also builds. Ford said it now has completed about 75 percent of its commitment to hire 12,000 workers by 2015.