ESPN college sports commentator Rece Davis has built a career as an expert on college hoops and football, but his first job was far from the glamour of March Madness: At 13, he got his first job cleaning trucks on Saturdays in Muscle Shoals, Alabama.

Davis says back then this was a great job. He could make $40, sometimes more, for five or six hours of work.

He said his objective was always to finish the job before the early games for college football came on, and there was one thing that repeatedly threatened that:

“You just hope that the guy driving the truck hadn’t gone through fresh tar on the road because (if he did that) you were there forever.”

Davis says scrubbing tar off trucks helped him learn early about work ethic and dependability.  But he says, he didn’t escape without being a little traumatized by his first job.

“That’s why now I almost always just drive through the car wash. I don’t remember the last time I even manually washed my car.”