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Airports and train stations have always been perfect use cases for wheeled luggage, but nobody started using them until the late 90s/early 00s. I remember as a child in the early 90s every airport had huge racks of carts you could rent for $0.25 because nobody had wheels on their suitcases.
Isn't this largely a case of democratization?
Luggage before wheeled suitcases didn't look like wheeled suitcases without wheels. You had the small suitcase and the sailor's duffle bag, which were have hand mobile and held a change of clothes or two that an ordinary traveler might pack for a trip, and then you had the steamer trunk an upper class traveler would pack which was designed to be moved and stacked primarily by porters and maximized for durability when stacked in a luggage car or the belly of a ship.
The value of an individual traveler moving a large bag by themselves really only comes into play recently, with the democratization of middle class travel and the disappearance of porters. Along with people having the expectation of packing more clothing!
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Every airport I've been to recently still has carts you can just pick up and use for free, and they work much better than wheeled luggage.
I'm sure luggage makers love the wheels though, because they break and make people want to buy new luggages much more often.
If you're going to be walking at all with your luggage outside the airport then carts don't help you at all. The lack of wheels only works if you're assuming a car direct from your house door to the airport and vice versa, that's very much not the case in large parts of the world (in London I'd take the Elizabeth line underground tube from Heathrow to Liverpool Street and then take a taxi from there if necessary, I wouldn't take a taxi from Heathrow back home).
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