FAIRBURY - What if when you a buy a custom vehicle the money doesn't go to a dealership, but to funding cancer research? Well, that's the "drive" for one national vehicle-based cancer awareness campaign that made a pit stop in Southeast Nebraska Wednesday.

The "Cruise for a Cause" campaign brought a custom-built Ford F-150 to Twin Rivers Ford dealerships in Fairbury and Beatrice Wednesday afternoon.

It's highlighted blue in honor of prostate cancer awareness. Wisconsin native Dan Neve started this operation in 2010 when both his wife and mother were diagnosed with breast cancer within a month of each other.

"Like most people, you don’t really think about it a lot until it affects you personally. It was one of things that was just an eye-opener that...cancer can hit us at any moment, and it is a game changer when you realize cancer is in your life and in your family. So just the opportunity to do what I do to hopefully help the next treatment, the next cure, in a small way," Neve said.

"I was told once that I’m a perfect example of what one person can do to hopefully make a difference, and it’s hard for me to accept that, but I think in the end it’s probably true and if you decide you really want to change something, or at least help make a change, you can."

His original goal was to raise ten thousand dollars for cancer research in his first year, but since then, they've donated more than $1.4 million.

"We’re all different, we’re not like a car where every part’s the same, we’re all different – so they might have a cure for me but they don’t have the cure for the rest of the world, so that’s what they’ve got to keep working on," Neve said.

Inspired by an old Ford ad where a light bulb flashes on, Neve has traveled through three dozen states raising money in what he calls his full-time hobby. He and the truck are on the way to the SEMA trade show next week in Las Vegas. With his wife Linda and friend of more than a decade, Troy Krieger of Diller, a fellow Ford enthusiast, in tow, they stopped off in Southeast Nebraska this week to kick off the 2025-26 fundraising campaign.

A callback to the Mustang Shelby that Neve originally purchased back in 2010, "Cruise for a Cause" has raffled off Mustangs for the last few years, before switching gears this year to the truck. It's a 710 Horsepower, specialty-made vehicle decked out with symbols of cancer awareness, and will be given away in October 2026.

All raffle entries between now and Saturday are counted twice. You can enter the raffle by scanning the QR code in this story - or at either Twin Rivers Ford location this week. And you can find more information and links to enter to win the truck on the campaign website.

 

"It’s a wonderful reason to give. Everybody has tough times, you don’t think cancer is going to affect you, but eventually it will. It’s one of those diseases that’s going to affect someone sometime in your family, your friendships, at some time it’s going to affect someone you love. And the only way that we can fix it in the future is through research," Neve said.

"In my lifetime we took a disease [polio] that was prevalent, that nobody knew about anymore. And that’s my hope with cancer is that...we all know people with cancer, but maybe in 50, 60 years we can say we don’t anymore. "