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Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl
I do not think that mules were ever used for stagecoaches, they were usually too weak and too slow.
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They were definitively used, afaik.
The Butterfield St Louis to San Francisco line (3000 miles iirc) used about 200 coaches, 1000 horses and 500 mules.
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Originally Posted by Roughing It, by Mark Twain
We left our six fine horses and took six mules in their place. But they were wild Mexican fellows, and a man had to stand at the head of each of them and hold him fast while the driver gloved and got himself ready. And when at last he grasped the reins and gave the word, the men sprung suddenly away from the mules’ heads and the coach shot from the station as if it had issued from a cannon
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After breakfast, we bathed in Horse Creek, a (previously) limpid, sparkling stream—an appreciated luxury, for it was very seldom that our furious coach halted long enough for an indulgence of that kind. We changed horses ten or twelve times in every twenty-four hours—changed mules, rather—six mules—and did it nearly every time in four minutes. It was lively work. As our coach rattled up to each station six harnessed mules stepped gayly from the stable; and in the twinkling of an eye, almost, the old team was out, and the new one in and we off and away again.
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