route & fleet

A cookie is a small text file that a website stores on your device. Some are needed for the site to work; others are used to measure audiences or to select and measure advertising. This page lists what Route & Fleet uses and how to control it.

Your choices

On your first visit a banner asks whether you accept advertising and analytics cookies, and remembers the answer so you are not asked again on every page.

Where personalised advertising is served to visitors in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, Google requires that the question be put by a consent management platform certified against the IAB Europe Transparency and Consent Framework (TCF) v2.2, which records choices at individual vendor level. That platform is provided by Google and takes over from the banner described above as soon as it is active on this site; when it does, its dialogue — not this site's own code — is what sets the consent signal the advertising stack reads, and the banner stands down so the two never appear together.

Until you make a choice, and for as long as you decline:

  • Only strictly necessary storage is used.
  • Google Consent Mode v2 is set to denied for ad_storage, ad_user_data, ad_personalization and analytics_storage. That default is written into the <head> of every page, before any advertising or analytics code is allowed to run.
  • Any advertising served is non-personalised and selected from the content of the page rather than from anything about you.

You can reopen the dialogue and change every one of those choices at any time with the Cookie settings control in the footer of every page, or by clearing your browser storage for this site.

1. Strictly necessary

These make the site usable and are always active.

NameTypePurposeDuration
Consent management storageCookie / local storageRecords your consent choices — and, once a certified platform is running, the TCF consent string — so you are not asked again on every pageUp to 13 months
routeops:themeLocal storageRemembers your light or dark theme preferenceUntil cleared
Hosting / security cookiesCookieLoad balancing, request routing and abuse prevention, set by our hosting providerSession to 12 months

2. Advertising

Set only after you accept. These are placed by Google and its advertising partners.

Name / familySet byPurposeTypical duration
__gads, __gpiGoogleAd delivery, frequency capping, measuring ad performanceUp to 13 months
IDE, test_cookieGoogle (DoubleClick)Measuring ad interactions and serving personalised adsUp to 13 months
NIDGoogleAd personalisation and preference storageUp to 6 months
Partner cookiesGoogle-certified vendorsAd selection, delivery and measurementVaries by vendor

Google acts as a third-party vendor and uses cookies to serve ads based on your prior visits to this and other websites. You can opt out of personalised advertising at Google Ads Settings, and see the full list of Google's certified partners in Google's advertising notice.

3. Analytics

Set only after you accept, and the measurement code itself is not loaded at all until then: decline, or simply never answer, and no request is made to Google Analytics on your behalf. If you do accept, it counts page views and article completion so we know which guides deserve updating.

Name / familyPurposeTypical duration
_ga, _ga_*Distinguishes users and sessions for aggregate reportingUp to 24 months

4. Managing cookies in your browser

Every major browser lets you block or delete cookies:

  • Chrome: Settings → Privacy and security → Third-party cookies
  • Firefox: Settings → Privacy & Security → Cookies and Site Data
  • Safari: Settings → Privacy → Manage Website Data
  • Edge: Settings → Cookies and site permissions

Blocking all cookies is your right, but note that some parts of any website — including consent memory — may stop behaving predictably.

5. Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control

We honour Global Privacy Control (GPC). If your browser sends a GPC signal, this site treats it as a refusal of advertising and analytics cookies without asking you again: Consent Mode stays denied and the analytics code is never loaded. You can still override it deliberately through Cookie settings in the footer if you want to. Browser "Do Not Track" headers have no agreed standard behaviour and are not used as a consent signal on this site.

6. Changes

We review this page whenever we change advertising or measurement providers. The last-updated date at the top reflects the current version. Related reading: our privacy policy and advertising disclosure.