The homestretch

As Dave Nemo enters the final miles of a career that’s spanned over five decades, the longtime trucking radio host says he plans to take listeners on a journey through where the industry has been over the past 50 years.

Recognized by truckers across the country as the host of “The Dave Nemo Show” and formerly of “The Road Gang,” Nemo has spent the past five decades cementing himself as a fixture in the trucking community. In March, during a live broadcast at the Mid-America Trucking Show, he announced he would be stepping away from full-time hosting duties.

During a recent interview with Land Line Now, Nemo explained that his announcement didn’t mean “goodbye forever” when it comes to his presence on the show.

“I’m not going to fully retire; I’m going to go into what I’m going to dub ‘active retirement,’” he said. “I’m going to continue to be on the show. I’m going to continue to contribute. But I’m going to kind of do what I want to do when I want to do it.”

Over this next year, he said he plans to take listeners through a history lesson of the industry, giving a glimpse of where it’s been over the past half-century. In his typical style, Nemo said he plans to use music as a jumping-off point.

“Talk about ‘the way things used to was,’ as the late John Parker would have said,” Nemo told Land Line. “There’s a lot to learn about our heritage in trucking.”

Hitting the road

Nemo got his broadcast start in 1969 at WWL in New Orleans before enlisting in the U.S. Army a year later. After returning from Vietnam in 1972, he was given his job back at the station and would go on to join Charlie Douglas and “The Road Gang.”

Nemo said his radio show and OOIDA share a similar origin story, being born out of the turbulence of the industry in the 1970s.

“What we did was keep them alert, awake and alive. That simple,” he said. “And we took it very seriously.”

Despite not having a background in trucking, Nemo said his blue-collar background – working on the river, where he made and broke tow for barges – helped him be accepted by truckers.

“I’ve been so thankful and grateful and blessed that the driving community has kind of adopted me,” Nemo said.

Of course, working on the river and working in front of a microphone require two different skill sets – and the latter, a distinct radio voice. Nemo insisted, however, that “the voice is the voice” and that he doesn’t have a different sound when he’s on the air. He also noted that this is by design and is based on some valuable advice imparted to him by his longtime co-host, Charlie Douglas.

“He said, ‘The only way to make it around here is to be yourself … A truck driver will spot a phony a mile away,’” Nemo said. “Truck drivers get cheated and messed with and delayed … Truckers have been lied to and cheated through every mile. And he says, ‘So you’ve got to be yourself. You cannot pretend to be anything else.’”

Along for the ride

That advice must have worked, with Nemo spending the next half century building a rapport and trust with his audience. Over that time, the industry would change dramatically, but the principles the show was built on would not.

One of those advances came in the way of communication. Nowadays, getting ahold of truckers while they’re over-the-road is simple, with practically everyone carrying a supercomputer capable of receiving calls in their pocket. Before the advent of the cell phone, when drivers would use banks of pay phones at truck stops to catch up on the details back home, Nemo said his show became another way for families to connect and share information.

“People would call in to the program, like the wife or sweetheart, and would make the music request, and the husband would hear it out on the road. And we would get calls from families to announce the birth of a baby to the dad. And it’s always been incredible through the years that a guy would come up to me and say, ‘Hey, my dad told me that he heard about me being born from you.’”

A stroll down memory lane isn’t the only thing Nemo has planned for his final year of full-time hosting. He and his team will be taking the show on the road for “The Last Ride of the Road Gang” – a yearlong tribute to the founders of trucking radio and a salute to the men and women of the industry.

As Nemo reflects on his career of over 50 years, the advice he got from Douglas all those years ago still rings true.

“I’m always reminded that if you’re true to yourself, then you’re true to everybody else,” he said. LL

Land Line Now’s Ashley Blackford contributed to this report.