Heavy Horse Pull: Fill & Download for Free

That’s very traditional from hundreds and hundreds of years ago. For a very long time, lightweight people were put on the very strong, large, heavy horses that pulled freight and heavy carriages because it was quite difficult for the carriage driver to stop the horses at the stations or stops. The riders provided additional control.With a number of horses harnessed together, they give each other ‘Dutch Courage’ and none of them much want to stop. The breeds used are also very active, high energy animals. When they get into that hard road trot, it’s pretty punishing to the rider’s backside.These ‘post riders’ developed the ‘posting trot’, where the rider allows the motion of the horse’s back to pop him upward off the saddle, and then sink down gently to the saddle, saving his backside from a real pounding. ‘Posting’ the trot takes very little energy and spares the rider a lot of suffering.There is, in fact, very little effort for the team of horses to pull even a fairly heavy carriage, on level ground, once it’s gotten rolling. The multiple horses are only necessary for pulling the carriage up the occasional hill, or through a ford in a river. So, much of the time they’re just galloping along basically pulling nothing. The carriage has a lot of momentum.In fact, the brakes on the old carriages were either rudimentary or absent. Even today, by tradition and by need, two particularly powerful horses are harnessed directly in front of the carriage, so they can provide much of the braking power by leaning back on the britching - the straps that go around their hind quarters.(some teams don’t have breeching, either because there are other means to stop the carriage or the carriage, such as the horses ‘setting’ against their collars, or the carriage is only used for ceremonies on level ground…).It still isn’t easy to drive a large team of very strong, heavy horses, but today we have some slightly more modern methods of coupling and joining the lines(reins that go from the horse to the carriage driver’s hands) that assists the driver in controlling the horses. We also have disk brakes on the carriages, LOL.Here’s the latest in technology for competition carriages -IJsbrandt Chardon, the top of the world

This is a BMW.This is a pick-up truck.The first image, to many Americans, evokes the snobbery of the English upper class -- something that you might appreciate as a desi.The lower image evokes an American ideal of agrarian hard work, industry, power, can-do, hands-on lifestyle. The well muscled draft horse is as American as a water buffalo might have been revered in parts of South Asia some years back.The pick-up truck took over where the deep affection for the draft horse, less than a century ago a regular feature, even on our urban streets, just disappeared.My grandfather delivered milk in a wagon drawn by a Morgan horse, a light draft breed, in the 1920s and 1930s, less than a hundred years ago. It was still more economical during the Great Depression to keep a light draft horse in Cleveland Ohio than it was to keep a car.Fire engines, tractor attachments, plows, combines, sleighs, wagons, cabs, all manner of machines and transportation were drawn by draft horses. Light horses were stabled by those who could afford single horses to ride, or to draw their fancy carriages with many light horses, rather than utility horses.In war time, heavy horse pulled artillery -- cannon and other war machines. (Sometimes mules, too.)Some breeds such as the Percherons are still brave and aggressive from being bred up as warhorses to bear armored knights in medieval and renaissance armies -- and in modern day, in peace, are often one-man loyal draft horses that haul sledges up mountains to retrieve tanks of maple sap from near vertical sugar bushes coated in snow and ice, braving the terrain with their half-meter diameter hooves.People are telling you it's practicality -- and I'm sure it is. But it's also romance. It's deep in the culture, and I think that's what you are sensing. It's as deep as elephants or cattle in India, but we're Americans, we don't think about it, we just do it (we're so *young!* :). We love our machines.People get this same sort of symbiotic thrill working with their trucks, even if they don't use them for much -- they are big powerful, near animistic work engines. There is more romance to the idea that there is horsepower under the hood than most people would admit.

A nice, analytical question. Anatomically, the horse is pushing in order to move the cart. The harness distributes the load across the horse’s breast and barrel (with a light harness), or along the base of the neck and shoulders, and across the chest (with a heavy harness. By pushing into the harness, the horse creates the required force. The harness pulls the load.