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rpcope1last Sunday at 9:50 PM0 repliesview on HN

That's basically a full out sprint for a relatively fast horse. Most can't sustain that for long and definitely not with a lot of load. Steam, gas, and diesel engines were and are capable of sustaining that for long durations with greater load, hence why it seems so jarring. Especially for large loads, even the earliest trucks were probably moving must faster than draft horses.