In what ways is a 6-horse team better than 6 individual horses?

Question

Would you say that the 6-horse team is more efficient? more effective? Would six riders be traveling more efficiently if all were in one coach...or by riding 6 individual horses?

Would the team beat an individual horse in terms of speed?

Answer 1

Generally, a team of horse pulling a vehicle of some kind (coach, sulky, Connestoga wagon, stagecoach) is pulling cargo or items of some kind that could not easily be carried on the back of a single horse.  Think about the Budweiser Clydesdales:  they pull a big beer wagon.  You could load each horse individually with beer barrels, but it's much easier, and more efficient, to load the beer in a cart and hitch the cart to a team of horses.

The general rule of thumb is that on a good road on level ground, a horse can pull at least its own weight up to 1.5 times its own weight in a wheeled vehicle.  That means that a 1,000 pound horse should be able to pull at least 1,000 pounds (vehicle + driver + load).  

I don't know if there's a formula for determining how many pounds a team of six (or more, or less) horses could pull, but I know it's many more pounds than they could carry.

The most limiting factors in determining the safe load limit for a horse-drawn vehicle are the quality of the road, the slope of the terrain (uphill you need a light load), the quality of the vehicle to be pulled (how freely the wheels turn, how good the brakes are for downhill slopes, how well-balanced the vehicle is), the kind of harness and hitch used on the horses (some kinds of harness work better than others, and the design of the hitch and how it distributes the weight are factors).  

In general, a hitch of horses will always be able to pull more weight than the same number of horses could carry on their backs.  (Side-benefit:  a hitch of horses can pull people who would be incapable of riding, like injured people, people who lack the strength or physical capacity to sit astride a horse, or people who don't know how to ride.)

An individual horse with a rider of normal weight will always be able to move faster than a team of horses, which is why messenger services and things like the pony express were done with riding horses rather than driving horses.  In general, horses that are driven are not expected to gallop.  The trot is the normal pace for driving horses.  (You really do not want to gallop a team of horses, or even a single, because most horse-drawn vehicles are just not terribly stable at high speeds, and a sudden turn, swerve, or hitting a rut or rock can cause a horse-drawn vehicle to overturn.)

Answer 2

It would depend on the reason for the travel. There's always strength in numbers. I don't think a team could beat a single horse. A coach or a wagon would not have the freedom of a single horse.