The afterburners were only used for taxiing and going supersonic. The Olympus engines actually generated so much thrust at idle that only the outboard pair were used for taxiing, and still apparently it was tricky to control.

I have seen various proposals for having some form of external taxi for aircraft, but nothing close to being adopted which I have put down to jet fuel still being cheap and the capital & operational costs being quite high for a lot of tractors with qualified drivers.

If fuel were that costly and if a plane expended a significant enough amount of it taxiing that the its range is affected, then a taxi that takes the aircraft to its takeoff position would be a no-brainer.