Feds sue Michigan-headquarted trucking company for failing to hire female truck drivers

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has accused a Michigan trucking company of refusing to hire truck drivers based on their gender.

On March 31, 2026, the EEOC filed suit against Warren, Michigan, headquartered Central Transport, LLC, in U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of truck drivers Maquater Hamilton, Cassandra Coleman, and other qualified women who applied to drive trucks for Central Transport from January 2016 to the present.

The suit seeks backpay, punitive damages, and a permanent injunction against discriminatory hiring practices by Central Transport. The EEOC requested a jury trial.

The EEOC accuses Central Transport of violating the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “by refusing and failing to hire female truck driver applicants because of their sex, female, on a nationwide basis from 2016 to the present.”

The lawsuit alleges that EEOC investigators learned that “many of the female applicants for truck driver positions were never interviewed even though they met or exceeded the minimum qualifications for the truck driver positions.”

“Central Transport’s decisions with regard to hiring qualified female truck driver applicants, when compared to male applicants, resulted in significantly fewer female applicants being hired than would be statistically expected on a nationwide basis for the years 2016 through January 2022,” the complaint states. “Female applicants who applied to Central Transport for a truck driver position were not treated consistent with Central Transport’s routine recruiting and hiring practices for the truck driver positions.”

The EEOC said that when Hamilton submitted her paper application with Central Transport in 2016, she had approximately 15 years of truck-driving experience. Officials say that the company declined to interview her and failed to send her application to the recruiting department. Near that same time, the husband of one of Hamilton’s friends, a male truck driver named Demetrius Saunders, was hired with only two months of truck driving experience, according to the suit. Hamilton filed a charge of discrimination with the EEOC in September 2016.

Coleman was a female truck driver with approximately 21 years of truck driving experience when she also applied for a job at Central Transport in 2016.

From the complaint:

“Coleman went to Central Transport’s Phoenix Terminal in November 2016 to fill out an application for a truck driver position. When Coleman asked a male dispatcher at the Phoenix Terminal to fill out an application, he told her the company had all the people it needed.

The male dispatcher at the Phoenix Terminal then tried to dissuade Coleman from filling out an application for the truck driver position, telling her, “it’s not going to do you any good and “maybe just come back in a couple of weeks and you can fill out an application then.”

Coleman then asked the male dispatcher at the Phoenix Terminal whether Central Transport hired female truck drivers and was told he wasn’t sure how many women work there presently, if any.“

Coleman submitted her application but was not interviewed or hired.

Coleman again applied with the company at the Portland Terminal location in 2019 but was not interviewed and was told that the position had been filled.

“During the time period immediately preceding and after Coleman submitted her application at the Portland terminal in October 2019, Central Transport’s Portland Terminal hired four male truck drivers,” the EEOC said.

Coleman filed a charge of discrimination with the EEOC in February 2020.