Before the transcontinental railroad was completed, the nation relied on muleskinners, bullwhackers, and stage drivers to sustain trade and economic survival in the West. From the early 1850s to 1869, the Overland Trail carried freight wagons and stagecoaches transporting people and goods to the Far West. Freight companies were flooded with supply orders from Army outposts, gold camps, farmers, and ranchers, and in the best years a freight outfit could clear half a million dollars on a single government contract. Most freighting companies used oxen because, although slower than mules or horses, they cost one-fifth as much and had greater endurance. In the final years of overland freighting, an unsuccessful effort was even made to use steam wagons instead of animal power. The trail combined several feeder routes beginning in Omaha, Bellevue, Nebraska City, and the Kansas river towns and converging near Fort Kearny, while in the 1850s Nebraska City was the chief Missouri River port for transferring river cargo to westbound wagons. The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 quickly ended long-haul freight business on the Overland Trail. Alexander Majors was a partner in Russell, Majors, and Waddell, the largest freighting firm on the plains, and the firm later operated the Pony Express. Although the Concord stagecoach was later called the "limousine of the Overland Trail," it was cramped and uncomfortable on the rough western trails.