30-year-old Ismail Mescioglu, a bus driver from Turkey, had always wanted to drive his very own truck, but he knew he could never afford to buy one. So he settled for the next best thing – to build one using discarded parts and scrap metal. Today, Ismail Mescioglu is the proud owner of a swanky street-legal red truck he named ‘IMES’

Ismail, a father-of-two from Turkey’s Tusba county, is the first person in Turkey to have built a large-size truck entirely on his own. He managed to complete the seemingly impossible project through sheer grit – he had no prior experience, no proper plan and no idea of how he was going to pull it off. “When I started the construction, everyone was taunting me,” he said. “Everyone was making fun of me.”

But Ismail was not one to give up. He started visiting scrap dealers and gathered as many parts as he could. He also bought an old Murat 131 car for the motor. For the body of the truck, he bought metal sheets and built the entire body of the vehicle himself. After several months of hard work, his patience finally paid off and the truck was ready. and the most impressive thing is it only cost him around $2,800.

Photo: Araba-Oto

Ismail said that the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s courage was his biggest source of motivation. He was so inspired by the national leader that he even wants put the Prime Minister’s initials, ‘RTE’, on his truck’s license plate; he’s waiting for official permission to do so.

Ismail’s relatives and friends are truly baffled by his achievement – they never actually expected him to build a functional truck on his own. Now, their lack of confidence is just another reason for the Turkish motorist to gloat whenever he gets behind the wheel of his bright big rig for a ride around town.

Photo: diyadinnet