A former minister, Nordstrom executive and Microsoft account coordinator walk into an auto auction.

No, that’s not a set-up to a dad joke.

More like the structure of a father-son(s) family-run business.

The McConkey Auction Group, to be exact.

The group has been selected as selected as Auto Remarketing’s and Used Car Week’s 2026 Auction Group of the Year, an award presented by Kinetic Advantage.

The group includes a mix of physical and digital auto auctions throughout the Pacific Northwest, where Bob McConkey and his family have established a regional powerhouse that has spanned decades and generations in the auto auction business.

Including his three sons, who each worked in industries outside of automotive before returning to the family business.

“Well, I think my dad has studied it his entire career pretty intentionally and even brought my mom into a lot of that,” said Collin McConkey, general manager of the group’s DAA Northwest location in Spokane, Wash. “When he was out at a convention or working, she was still giving us a lot of those principles.

“And really, we would have family meetings,” he said, laughing, “and they’re basically business meetings, from as little as I can remember.”

Those meetings were never “stuffy” and there was never any pressure for the McConkey boys to join the auction industry.

In fact, before joining the auction business, Collin worked at Microsoft. His brother Brian was in human resources at Nordstorm, and their brother Aaron had several roles outside auto, including time as an executive pastor.

They were kept in the loop about the family business, but never under pressure, Collin said.

There’s often risk in family-run businesses, Bob says, and that can often lead to dysfunction.

“It was really important for me that they didn’t start their career in the auction business,” he said. “They all went out and they applied for jobs, built a resume, got promoted and, in essence, what I feel like is they built their own brand and their own self-esteem.”

The structure of the auction group is such that none of the three McConkey sons work directly for their dad.

“There’s always been layers of management that they have been in the middle of and have contributed to (where they can) gain their own level of self-respect and respect amongst their peers,” Bob said, “instead of just starting, you know, working for dad.

“And they don’t work for dad now and they never have and they never will,” he said. “Right now, I’m working for them.”

The dynamic of the family business “has flipped,” in a sense, as the younger McConkeys take on more leadership roles. Aaron is assistant general manager at DAA Seattle, and Brian is vice president of digital solutions at MAG Now, the group’s online auction platform.

Part of the group’s leadership team includes David Pendergraft, who is chief operating officer at McConkey Auction Group and of a similar generation as the McConkey sons.

“Just speaking of the McConkeys as one that is not …  (for) Colin and his brothers, there was never a force to come into the business, it was all a personal choice,” Pendergraft said. “And the difference on that is, you can tell by their approach and just their drive and passion that’s very similar … it’s about the people, it’s about wanting to just keep to the core competencies, much of what has been built on by Bob.

“But I think that choice to come in and that choice to want to build on the legacy as individuals really just changes the dynamic of the family atmosphere and family, environment, too,” Pendergraft said. “It just makes a difference.”

As the leadership dynamic of the McConkey Auction Group develops, so too has its geographic operational structure.

The group traces its roots back some 70 years in Seattle, when Bob’s father, Bob McConkey Sr., started an auction that was eventually sold to GE Capital. After a career in the corporate world and a “pause” from the auction business, Bob Jr. started Dealers Auto Auction of Spokane in 1992 with Greg Mahugh. That Spokane, Wash., auction would eventually become what is now DAA Northwest in 2000.

The group would expand outside the regions to outposts like Las Vegas and Kansas City over the years, before eventually re-centering operations on the Pacific Northwest.

DAA Seattle opened in 2013, MAG Alaska opened in 2023, with DAA Portland opening in December 2024 and MAG Southern Oregon in May 2025.

Growing up in the business, Collin would hear, “Oh, I knew your Grandpa back in the day,” or “The first auction I ever went to was your dad’s when he had started Spokane.”

“So even though its more modern move,” Collin said of the group recentering its operations on the PNW, “I think we just have so much historical tie here.

“There is power in that and people do trust the name and the brand,” he said.

By having auctions concentrated in the region, the McConkey Auction Group has been able to “canvas a broader area and kind of create one unified buyer base,” Collin said.

Buyers can keep tabs on the auctions on a day-to-day basis, following their respective weekly sales and allowing each auction to be “a little less siloed.”

“And even unifying our transportation team, so we can get back hauls from one sale for a buyer – maybe he’s consigning in Spokane and buying the other way. And so, we’re doing back hauls and just trying to create a little bit less friction for that unified buyer base,” Collin said.

Reducing friction may be a priority for most any auction, but independent auctions — and independent auction groups, for sure —certainly face their own set of challenges.

As the auto auction business expanded during the 1980s and 90s heyday of the “program car evolution” — largely through the work of independents, Bob said — there came massive facilities with hundreds of acres and ample reconditioning space. While those legacy auction facilities have tons of capacity, it’s a pricey proposition for an independent to expand in 2026, particularly in West Coast markets like Portland and Seattle, where McConkey Auction Group has opened locations in the last decade and change.

“So, we have retrofitted (those facilities) in some pretty creative ways,” Bob said, “and what we have discovered is that the customer doesn’t care – it’s what happens inside. It’s the heartbeat of the business.

“It isn’t the facility that creates the dynamic that makes it successful, and I think that the independents have always been resourceful that way and that’s how we’ve approached the business.”

Bob added, “What it is about is that the bathrooms have to be clean and the food has to be good and the people have to smile, but it doesn’t have to be a Taj Mahal of a facility in order to be successful … we’ve had a tremendous amount of success in Portland and Seattle with very inferior facilities compared to some of these big facilities we compete against.”

Pendergraft adds that being an independent group allows McConkey to be nimble and adapt quickly. Being independent and regionally focused also allows the group to become an expert in its market, the Pacific Northwest.

“The opportunity (that) I would say is different, maybe not a disadvantage, is the technology suite,” Pendergraft said. “You have to have the tools to compete. You don’t have to be cutting-edge, you don’t have to be a trailblazer, but it’s (about) having the tools to compete to keep the core competencies rolling.

“And the opportunity is, we get to do that as a collective group,” he said. “It’s not a one-off — we don’t necessarily have the resources of maybe some of the publicly traded companies or Cox, etc., but we do have the minds and a like-mindedness to come together to compete and move forward in that technical space.”

The collective group effort is part of the mindset and culture at McConkey Auction Group, Pendergraft said.

Multiple sites and platforms operating as one team, rather than siloed operations.

“It’s one team, one vision, one goal,” Pendergraft said. “We are in the Northwest market together and with that, we all have one goal of what we are trying to accomplish.

“Seattle has its numbers it’s trying to hit, but it isn’t individualized (or) kind of cutthroat … we really truly believe from top to bottom, if it sells within MAG, whether it’s on our MAG Now platform in Seattle or the auction in Seattle or if they wanted to go to Portland because that’s a better opportunity for doing that, it’s still within (the company) and there’s a celebration throughout that core.

“We a have a weekly sales call,” he said. “Everyone’s celebrating those wins together.”

And at Used Car Week 2026, they’ll celebrate another win, together.