Most cookie pages are written to hide what's happening behind two thousand words of legal padding. This one is written to tell you the actual answer, which is short: this site stores one value in your browser, and optionally turns on a basic visit counter if you click Accept. There's no advertising technology anywhere on fleetdocusa.com. No tracking pixels, no third-party ad cookies, no fingerprinting, no data broker in the loop. Below is the whole thing, in plain terms, with the exact names of what's stored so you can verify it yourself in your own browser.
What Cookies and LocalStorage Actually Are
Before the categories, a sixty-second explanation for anyone who's never had a reason to care.
A cookie is a small text value a website asks your browser to keep. Your browser sends it back to that same website on later visits. That's how a site remembers you logged in, or what's in a cart. Cookies can also be set by third parties — ad networks, mostly — which is how "the ads follow you around the internet" works. A third-party cookie set by an ad network on Site A can be read by the same network on Site B, and that's the tracking people rightly dislike.
LocalStorage is similar but simpler: a small key-value store inside your browser, per website, that never gets sent anywhere automatically. A site writes something to localStorage; only that same site can read it back; and it stays until the site deletes it or you clear your browser data. This site's preference storage uses localStorage, not a traditional cookie, which is why you'll see the key name below rather than a cookie name. Functionally it's the same idea: your browser remembers a choice for us.
The important mechanical fact for everything that follows: we cannot store anything in your browser without your browser's cooperation, and you can wipe anything we've stored in about fifteen seconds. You hold the delete key, not us. More on exactly how further down.
Category 1: Essential
There is exactly one item in this category:
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Storage type | localStorage (not a server-sent cookie) |
| Key name | fd_cookie_pref |
| Possible values | "accept" or "decline" |
| Set when | You click Accept or Decline on the cookie banner |
| Expires | Never on its own — lasts until you clear site data |
| Purpose | Remembers your choice so the banner doesn't nag you on every page, forever |
That's the complete contents of the Essential category. One key, two possible values, zero personal information. It exists for one reason: so that after you've told us your preference once, the banner leaves you alone. Without it, the banner would reappear on every single page load, and within a week you'd hate this site more than you hate a scale house lineup. We call this category "essential" not because the site breaks without it — every page works fine either way — but because a working consent mechanism legally and practically requires remembering what you answered. You can't have a "no" that sticks without writing down the "no."
One edge case worth knowing: if your browser blocks localStorage entirely (some strict privacy configurations do), clicking Accept or Decline still dismisses the banner for that visit — the site handles the failure quietly and just hides the bar — but nothing is saved, so the banner will return on your next visit. That's not us being stubborn. It's your browser declining to remember, and we respect that.
Category 2: Analytics
This category exists only if you click Accept. If you click Decline, nothing in this category is ever set, ever counted, ever transmitted. The word "only" in that first sentence is load-bearing.
When you accept, the site counts which compliance topics visitors research most — whether more people are reading the DOT inspection page than the IFTA filing page, whether the registration renewal essay gets traffic spikes in the months before common renewal deadlines, that kind of thing. The counting is aggregate and topic-level: page viewed, topic tagged, counter incremented. It answers the question "what do fleet operators need the most help with?" and nothing else.
Why do we care which topics get researched most? Because the research calendar follows it. If the data says owner-operators are hammering the IFTA pages in the last week of every quarter — they are, predictably — that tells us the IFTA quarterly guides need their rate tables updated before quarter-end, not after. The analytics exist to prioritize research work. They don't exist to sell you anything, because this site has no advertisers to sell you to.
And if you clicked Decline at some point — good. That was a real choice, honored at the code level. The decline path doesn't set a "soft" version of tracking, doesn't degrade into anonymous-anyway counting, and doesn't punish you with a worse experience. Decline means nothing is set. You can read every word of this site, every guide listing, every rate table, with zero analytics attached to your visit.
What We Never Store
The shortest way to define a tracking policy is to say what it doesn't do. Whether you click Accept or Decline, this site never collects or stores:
- Your name. We don't know it from your browsing, and the analytics have no field for it.
- Your email address from browsing. The only way we ever have your email is if you send us one or buy a guide. Reading this page right now tells us nothing about who you are.
- Cross-site tracking. There are no third-party cookies on this site, period. Nothing here follows you to other websites, and nothing from other websites reports back here. The concept doesn't exist in our code.
- Precise location. We don't request your device's location and don't want it.
- Device fingerprinting. No canvas tricks, no font enumeration, no battery-status nonsense. We don't build shadow profiles of people who clicked Decline.
- Purchase behavior tied to browsing. Guide sales go through the payment processor for the transaction itself. That record is not merged with your page-view history.
Want to verify all this yourself? Open your browser's developer tools (F12 in most browsers), go to the Application or Storage tab, and look at localStorage for fleetdocusa.com. You'll see fd_cookie_pref and nothing else of ours. Check the Cookies section too — you'll find it empty. We encourage the inspection. A site with nothing to hide is easy to audit.
The Banner, Word for Word
The cookie banner on this site says exactly this:
We use cookies to track which fleet compliance topics visitors research most. You can decline.
Two links sit next to it: Accept and Decline. Both are real choices presented with equal weight — same size, same styling, same one-click effort. No bright "Accept All" button next to a buried "manage options" maze. No pre-ticked boxes. No countdown pressure. Click Accept and the fd_cookie_pref key is written with the value "accept," the banner disappears, and topic counting runs on your visits. Click Decline and the key is written with the value "decline," the banner disappears, and nothing else happens. Click neither and the banner stays at the bottom of the screen — but it doesn't block content, doesn't dim the page, and doesn't follow your scroll demanding attention.
One honest detail about that banner text: it says "cookies" because that's the word people recognize. The preference itself is stored in localStorage, as described above. The distinction matters to auditors and to the curious, which is why it's spelled out here, but the practical meaning for you is identical.
How to Change Your Choice
There's no "cookie settings" dashboard on this site, and that's deliberate — a dashboard for one stored value would be theater. Instead, changing your choice works like this:
- Clear this site's data in your browser. In Chrome: Settings → Privacy and Security → Site Settings → View permissions and data stored across sites, find fleetdocusa.com, delete. In Firefox: Settings → Privacy & Security → Manage Data. In Safari: Settings → Privacy → Manage Website Data. Every browser has an equivalent; they all do the same thing.
- Reload any page on this site. With fd_cookie_pref gone, the banner returns — the site treats you exactly like a first-time visitor, because as far as your browser is concerned, you are one.
- Click your new choice. Accept or Decline, same as before. The new value overwrites nothing because there was nothing left to overwrite.
This works in both directions, obviously. Accepted and changed your mind? Clear, reload, decline. Declined and now you'd rather help the research calendar? Clear, reload, accept. There's no lock-in period, no cooling-off wait, no record kept of how many times you've flipped. The current value of one key in your own browser is the entire state of the relationship.
The Weather Fetch — No Cookie Involved
Some pages on this site show live conditions at our two offices — temperature, humidity, pressure for Jersey City and Tokyo. That data comes from the Open-Meteo API, a free weather service. Here's exactly what happens mechanically when you load one of those pages: your browser, not our server, sends a request directly to api.open-meteo.com asking for current conditions at the two office coordinates, and the response fills in the numbers you see.
Two things follow from that design. First, no cookie is involved — the Open-Meteo request carries no cookies from this site and sets none. Second, your browser's IP address is visible to Open-Meteo for the duration of that request, the same way it's visible to any site your browser talks to directly. That's inherent to how the web works, and it's the full extent of what any third party sees from this site's operation. If the fetch fails — Open-Meteo is down, or your network blocks it — the page shows "Updating..." rather than fake numbers, and retries on the next load. We don't simulate weather. Ever.
If you'd rather your browser not make that request at all, blocking api.open-meteo.com in your browser or network filter changes nothing else about the site — every page, every guide, every table works identically. You just won't see the office conditions box fill in.
Questions
Anything unclear about what's stored or counted, email research@fleetdocusa.com. The privacy side of the business — how purchase and contact emails are handled — is covered on the Privacy Policy page. This page covers the browser side only, and it covers all of it: one key, one optional counter, one weather fetch, and a delete button that's always in your hands.