In 1830 a bold and vigorous attempt was made to utilize the wheel-horse. A French post-office official, M. Dreuze by name, brought forward an improvement on the old two-wheel velocipede, which bid fair to be successful. […] A number of the country letter-carriers were mounted on the wheel-horse, and whilst the roads continued dry and hard M. Dreuze could congratulate himself on the success of his invention; but with wet weather came bad roads, and to the wet succeeded frost and snow. A little extra labour was all that was required to overcome the extra friction of the bad roads, but the wheels refused to progress on the slippy frozen surface.