People wanting to get more stuff faster is a universal motivation not limited (in theory or in practice) to capitalism. To the extent that anyone is exploited, that's just selfishness, again a universal motivation.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isis_(ship)
As part of the
Surely basic food supply is "the bare minimum of stuff" and the rate is fixed to 'each day' (and the delivery to grain stores is 'each harvest in the supplying region'? Yes, it's more as populations grow and centralise, but that appears to be occurring the context of the question, no?
But in the spirit of good faith I will give some:
- Movement of fish/meat to markets before it spoils
- Delivery of military messages around the battlefield. Also supply trains for military expeditions
- Projects like the Grand Canal in China (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Canal_(China)). Pretty much anywhere in history where people opted for using water transport of goods over land transport was done for speed/cost reasons.