Last month I visited the reconstructed stone- and early bronze-age 'Pfahlbauten' (stilt houses) at Unteruhldingen. On display, they had a wooden cart representative of the kind that would have been used at the time, along with the observation (see quote) that the entire thing could be disassembled and rebuilt under half an hour! That makes the question not so much "how long does this last?" but "how long would it take to rebuild?" Once you start adding iron tyres, springs and bearings a vehicle becomes impossible for even the most accomplished cartwright to assemble alone.

> Wagenfunde, hergestellt vom Wagenbaumeister Niethammer, der aus Einzelteilen in zwölf Minuten wieder zusammengesetzt werden kann, illustrieren nicht nur den hohen Stand der Fahrzeugtechnik vor 3000 Jahren, sie bieten auch die Gelegenheit im praktischen Versuch Wendekreis, Tragkraft und erzielbare Geschwindigkeiten zu messen.

p.24-p.25 at https://www.pfahlbauten.de/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/5_neue...