Tapered roller bearings are the most basic and widely used, consisting of a cone assembly and a cup. Timken patented the first in 1898 and today offers the world's widest variety in inch and metric sizes.

Tapered roller bearings have tapered inner and outer ring raceways as well as tapered rollers. They are designed to accommodate combined loads, i.e. simultaneously acting radial and axial loads. The projection lines of the raceways meet at a common point on the bearing axis  to provide a true rolling action and therefore low frictional moments during operation. The axial load carrying capacity of tapered roller bearings increases with increasing contact angle α. The size of the contact angle, which is usually between 10° and 30°, is related to the calculation factor e the larger the value of e, the larger the contact angle.