the entire Soviet Deep Battle doctrine relied on rapid movement, and for that you need mechanization. And tank riders can only amount for a small part of that.
in late '43, the German rout began when the Soviets became faster and more mechanized, and the Germans became less mobile with every lost, unreplaced vehicle. Read the memoirs of German soldiers after 43. So often they talk about the speed of the Soviet advances and breakthroughs - By the time they retreated out of an encirclement to a new position, the soviet mechanized units had already passed them.
the soviets still fought and lost enormous quantities of men, and faced the brunt of the fighting. without them, Western Europe would have been a completely different story. but without American trucks (among many other things) they would have been advancing at a vastly slower pace, giving the Germans time to prepare much stronger positions which would have claimed exponentially more Soviet casualties, and potentially caused a stalemate.
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