buckboard

plural buckboards

1. A simple, distinctively American four-wheeled horse-drawn wagon designed for personal transport as well as for transporting animal fodder and domestic goods, often with a spring-mounted seat for the driver.

   […] he turned to Differ and said in an employer's tone, "Got everything ready?" "On the buckboard," said Differ in the tone of a Capricornian employee.

   1938, Xavier Herbert, chapter VI, in Capricornia, page 85

   2 more examples

   In a few hours he would actually be at Highwater. Perhaps there would be a real buckboard at the station; perhaps the first man he saw would be some old-timer who would remember that it was McCumber who had first blazed a way through Highwater County.

   1918, Sinclair Lewis, “Afterglow”, in I'm a Stranger Here Myself and Other Stories, New York: Dell, published 1962, pages 79–80

   When he turned his head, aiming for a last look at Brother, turned it as much as the rope that connected his neck to the axle of a buckboard allowed, and, later on, when they fastened the iron around his ankles and clamped the wrists as well, there was no outward sign of trembling at all.

   1987, Toni Morrison, Beloved, New York: Vintage, published 2004, page 106