As long as vehicles have been rolling, the speed of the load-carrying wheels has been an issue. When I
was a young boy watching western movies in the 1960s, I could always tell when a wagon was going to crash, because
the camera would focus on a wood-spoked, steel-tired wagon wheel that was obviously spinning faster than it should.
Those wooden wheels had a hard wood hub spinning on a hard wood axle; there was no bearing at all except for the
animal fat-based grease that was packed in between the components.