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The House approved a bill on June 29 that would block any federal mandate requiring the use of electronic onboard recorders on vehicles, including a regulation included in the highway funding legislation President Obama was expected to sign late last week.

Those in our industry can make whatever excuses they want for not using EOBRs. The bottom line is they haven’t wrapped their minds around how to make money legally. I mean, they might as well be bootlegging whiskey. It’s the same damn thing.

We live in an age of electronic information. Computers, the Internet, iPhones, iPads, GPS . . . all these technological wonders work to make our lives easier, reduce paperwork and give us all more time to do other things.

After carefully weighing the pros and cons in the sometimes overheated debate over whether the federal government should mandate electronic logging devices in heavy-duty trucks, we unequivocally support a requirement for electronic logging to monitor hours-of-service compliance.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration has formally withdrawn its regulation that would have mandated electronic onboard recorders for some carriers.

The Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration continues to be dead set on forcing every commercial vehicle in the United States to carry an electronic onboard recorder — better known as an EOBR — despite the device’s hefty price tag and general uselessness as a safety tool.

American Trucking Associations urged members of the upcoming House-Senate highway-bill conference to include a mandate for electronic onboard recorders, in order to help drivers and carriers meet federal hours-of-service mandates.