If both parties have 1 Gbps connection it will take about 20 min to move about 128 GB. But if one end has only 100 Mbps, then it is already 3,5h. If can only maintain reliably 25 Mbps, then it is already shy over 14h. So you can almost mail a thumb drive faster.
Sure, physically moving the thumb drive from one computer to another takes virtually no time - the bottleneck is getting the bits on and off the thumb drive, which can be quite slow depending on how cheap a thumb drive you happen to have lying around. I would be happy to be able to sustain 100 Mbps (12 MB/s) on transfers to/from my thumb drive!
You can get effectively NVME over USB. Now, the question is, are you using a 5 or 10mbps (or higher with TB/usb4) connection, supported cable, is there a hub in the way restricting traffic, etc.
With most computers, the front ports may or may not be the fastest ports. If there's a front panel USB C connection, that's usually your best bet, then red/yellow ports in the back... Of course, it could be an older device/interface, etc.
I kind of hope that with USB5, they standardize on labelling/cable requirements as well as reduce the "optional" bits to at least fall under one of 2-3 umbrella sets of requirements. It's a bit of a mess.
All of that said, I have nvme drives over USB that are at least as fast as a SATA connected drive, and generally much faster depending on the port used.
It's not as fast as a USB-C to USB-C cable that can do 40gbps with IP-over-thunderbolt, but good enough for most use cases.
Sometimes, it's just easier to SneakerNet that chongus mass of "the most important data ever".