# Rick Palumbo, Owner at Palumbo Brothers Moving — read of Moving AI, May 26 2026

> 14 years running a 12-truck operation out of Columbus. We do residential and some light commercial. I have three estimators, a dispatcher, and enough chaos on Monday mornings to kill a man.

## How I got here

My buddy Dave who runs a crew out of Dayton texted me a link Friday afternoon. Said "this is the one I've been looking for, check it out." Dave says that about something every three months so I put it in my back pocket. Sat down with it Sunday night after the kids were in bed because I had 20 minutes and I was already thinking about the leads we probably lost over the weekend.

## What I clicked first

The first line hit close enough: "You lose three leads before lunch because nobody's at the desk." That's not exactly my situation but it's close. My problem is the opposite end of the day -- Saturday evenings, Sunday mornings. Nobody wants to work those windows and customers are submitting quote requests from their couch. So the hook landed. I kept reading.

## Where I paused

"Leads contacted within 5 minutes convert at 9 times the rate of leads reached after 30 minutes." I've seen versions of this statistic floating around for years and I believe the general point. But I stopped here because this is exactly where these products always promise the moon and then quietly admit they can't actually handle a 3-bedroom with a piano, a storage pod, and a fourth-floor apartment. The page says "Instant Quote Engine... generates a complete, itemized quote in under 3 minutes using your rates, fuel surcharges, and packing add-ons." I want to know what happens when the customer submits something weird. What does the AI do with "we have a hot tub, a pool table, and we're going from a 4th floor walkup to a house 45 minutes away"? Does it guess? Does it kick to a human? The page doesn't say.

## What I distrusted

"38% More closed jobs." No sample size. No time period. No mention of whether that's compared to their own baseline before signing up or against some industry average. Same with "9 hrs Saved per estimator weekly" -- I'd like to know who measured that and how. Sandra Park says "Revenue is up 34 percent since April" -- okay, since which April? How many months is that? And the "2,400+ Jobs managed monthly" -- is that total across all their customers or one account? That number is doing a lot of work on this page and I genuinely don't know what it refers to.

The testimonials also feel just a little too tidy. Three owners, three different cities, three different specific numbers. Marcus got "11 extra jobs in the first month." Sandra's estimator now "handles 5 times the volume." Dave's dispatch board is "worth the price." Every testimonial hits a different feature. That's either excellent curation or something else.

## What would convince me

One screen recording of an actual weird quote request getting handled. Not a polished demo video with a simple 2-bedroom move. I want to see what the AI produces when someone submits something complicated, and I want to see what the customer actually receives. If the output looks like a real quote from a real company, I'm interested. If it looks like a form letter with numbers plugged in, I'll know immediately.

Also: one real company I can call. Not a testimonial blurb. A name and a number. If Marcus Deleon at Crosstown Moving in Chicago is real, let me Google him and see if he's actually running this software.

## What I'd ask in an email reply

1. When the AI generates a quote for a job with unusual items (piano, antiques, oversized furniture), what does the output actually look like and does it flag it for human review or just guess?

2. What happens after the 5-day follow-up sequence ends and the lead still hasn't booked? Is that just a dead lead in your system, or is there a way to push them into a longer nurture?

3. My dispatcher currently uses a whiteboard and texts drivers from her cell phone. Walk me through what the transition actually looks like for her on day one.

## Verdict: on-the-fence

The problem description is accurate enough that I read the whole page, which is more than I do for most of these. But the proof is thin and the quote-generation black box is a real concern for my business. I'd send one email to see if there's a human behind this who can answer a specific question without a sales deck.

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*Memo by skeptic persona, generated 2026-05-26. Studio breaks own self-grading loop.*