Muhlenberg County’s Mark Pogue Named 2019 TIME Dealer of the Year

The Pogue name is synonymous with Muhlenberg County as is the Pogue Automotive Group. And Mark Pogue, owner and Dealer Principal, will now be synonymous with a prestigious honor.

Each year, TIME selects auto dealers from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia and this year, Mark Pogue, has been named as a TIME Dealer of the Year in Partnership with Ally.

Mark will represent Kentucky when he is presented with the high honor at the 102nd annual National Automobile Dealers Association Show on January 25th, 2019.

This also means he is among the 51 nominees for the national award.

TIME publisher Jorg Stratman made the announcement along with Doug Timmerman, the president of Auto Finance for Ally Financial.

The TIME press release indicates that the award is given based on one's level of success and "long-standing commitment to community service."

Mark Pogue and his family have been checking off those boxes for years.

He was quoted as saying, "I believe in keeping my business philosophy simple: 'Do the very best for everybody, every day."

Mark founded D&P Auto Sales in 1987 and moved the dealership to Powderly in 1990.

By 1994, he'd moved D&P to a bigger facility in Powderly and began growing his inventory.

The community took a major hit from a coal recession in the 90s, after which Mark was "able to provide current-model sedans to customers and keep payments at or below $200 a month." He was able to "match their down payments or trade-ins up to $2000," which "greatly helped people who had been displaced from their jobs."

Throughout the 2000s, Mark and the Pogue family owned and operated two dealerships (Chrysler in Greenville and Chevy in Central City) that were acquired from Lester Motors and, by 2013, were able to move into the state-of-the-art facilities in Powderly that serve as their base of operations today.

We congratulate Mark Pogue and are fortunate to have him as a representative of the Bluegrass State in San Francisco.

Next stop...the national award. If we could beam in a pep rally to the Bay Area on January 25th, we would.