\u201cI can understand where they say they don\u2019t want them working hard,\u201d said Picket, 72, as he sat in the driver\u2019s seat of his four-seat green carriage parked in a row of mule-drawn carriages along Decatur Street. \u201cBut I know we don\u2019t treat them bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Baby Girl stands with the other mule carriages by Jackson Square in New Orleans, Saturday, July 25, 2026.<\/p>\n
STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER<\/p>\n
Picket, who grew up in Uptown New Orleans and started driving in the 1980s, was responding to some animal rights activists\u2019 claims of mistreatment in the carriage industry. In addition to the concerns in New York, in Philadelphia, where Picket himself once did a stint as a horse-drawn carriage driver, officials in June\u00a0banned its carriages<\/a>\u00a0(though the last business closed there in 2023). Other cities like Chicago have also phased out the practice<\/a> in recent years. Soon San Antonio<\/a> will, too.<\/p>\n Talks of similar bans haven\u2019t proliferated in New Orleans, where horses and mules have been pulling people in some capacity, whether in carriages or streetcars or parades<\/a>, for centuries. But the turning tide in some cities is something Picket and his boss, Mid-City Carriages owner Louis Charbonnet III, have on their mind.<\/p>\n Charbonnet, who is 87 and said he is thinking of selling Mid-City Carriages after three dozen years of family ownership, said he\u2019s gotten questions about the recent accident in New York from people contemplating purchasing his business.<\/p>\n \u201cI told them, \u2018Go to court, look at the accident rate,\u2019” Charbonnet said of the industry in New Orleans. “They were satisfied.”<\/p>\n ‘Stubborn as a mule’<\/p>\n Notably, New Orleans already has its own ban on horse-drawn carriages, and the mules that pull them today are part of a pact made decades ago.<\/p>\n In 1980, two horses died pulling packed carriages through the French Quarter during a summer heat wave. The deaths provoked a flurry of attention on the industry and led to calls to end the practice.<\/p>\n Mule carriages wait for rides by Jackson Square in New Orleans, Saturday, July 25, 2026.<\/p>\n STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER<\/p>\n Instead of outlawing animal-drawn carriages entirely, the New Orleans City Council brokered a compromise with the carriage industry and the Louisiana SPCA. The horses were replaced with mules, a hybrid of horse and donkey, which some veterinarians say are more sure-footed, intelligent and better able to withstand heat than horses.<\/p>\n New Orleans is one of the only places in the U.S. that bans horse-drawn carriages but allows mule-drawn carriages.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis is one thing that New Orleans got right. It puts mules to work, and not horses,\u201d said Charbonnet, a former state representative who represented the French Quarter at the time the regulations were implemented. \u201cHorses will work until they die; they\u2019ll just drop dead on you. Mules will let you know when they are tired, and it\u2019s time to go to the barn. That\u2019s why they say, \u2018stubborn as a mule.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n In the years since 1980, the city has further ratcheted up its regulations<\/a> around heat and animal welfare. By city ordinance, mules can\u2019t be used if the temperature reaches 95 degrees or the heat index reaches 105. If they do, owners face a $500 fine.<\/p>\n \u201c99% of the time we\u2019re ready to go before it gets to that,\u201d Picket said. A few summers ago, he recalled, they didn\u2019t work a day in August.<\/p>\n New Orleans currently licenses 30 carriages across four different companies: Mid-City Carriages, Royal Carriages, Rollin 20s, and Good Old Days Buggies. Efforts to reach the other owners were not successful.<\/p>\n \u2018Different place than up there\u2019<\/p>\n The switch to mules hasn\u2019t quelled all criticisms, though. A small group protested the industry in Jackson Square in 2012 after an unlicensed operator\u2019s carriage animal died, CBS reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ashley Bryne, spokesperson for PETA, the animal-rights advocacy group, said mule-drawn carriages should be banned in New Orleans. The practice is unnecessarily cruel because it requires animals to work through the hot summers and puts them at risk of injury, such as from traffic, Byrne said.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is no reason to be putting a horse or mule or any other animal through that kind of misery just for the sake of entertainment,\u201d Byrne said in an interview.<\/p>\n Still, Picket said that in New Orleans, he sees less antagonism toward the industry from animal rights advocates than from frustrated drivers who get stuck behind the slow-moving carriages. (\u201cI pull over,\u201d Picket emphasized.)\u00a0<\/p>\n Willy Picket drives Baby Girl further up the line of mule-drawn carriages by Jackson Square in New Orleans, Saturday, July 25, 2026.<\/p>\n STAFF PHOTO BY SOPHIA GERMER<\/p>\n When it comes to accidents<\/a>, a search of New Orleans civil court records from the last two decades involving the two largest companies, Royal Carriages and Mid-City Carriages, shows riders and pedestrians have filed various suits, alleging bruised arms and legs, injured feet, whiplash and vehicle damage from fender benders<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Matthew Hemmer, a senior trial attorney at the personal injury law firm Morris Bart, who reviewed the court records, said he was \u201csurprised at how few cases there were.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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