The Challenge
For a removals company, the hardest part of quoting a job is working out how much stuff a customer actually has. The price hinges on volume, how many cubic metres of furniture and boxes need to be moved, and therefore which size truck and how many hours the job will take.
Traditionally that means one of two things: an in-home or video survey that ties up a staff member for every enquiry, or a long manual checklist where the customer clicks through dozens of items and hopes they’ve remembered everything. Both are slow, both create drop-off, and an inaccurate volume estimate leads directly to an inaccurate quote.
The client wanted a faster, more accurate way for customers to get a realistic estimate up front, without needing a surveyor to visit and without asking people to tally up their entire home item by item.
The Solution
I built an AI estimating tool directly into the company’s online quote form. Instead of counting items by hand, the customer simply takes a few photos of the rooms they’re moving, the living room, bedrooms, kitchen, and uploads them.
Behind the scenes, those photos are sent to a vision-capable AI model that reads the images the way an experienced estimator would: identifying the furniture and belongings on show, applying standard Australian removalist volume values to each one, and returning a realistic total in cubic metres.
Photo-Based Volume Estimation
The AI does the work a person would otherwise spend time on during a site visit. From a handful of room photos it:
- Detects the notable furniture and goods visible across every photo.
- Estimates the volume of each item using industry-standard cubic-metre values.
- Returns a single, realistic total moving volume for the whole job.
- Lists the items it based the estimate on, with quantities, so the number is transparent.
- Flags when photos are unclear and still provides its best estimate.
An Instant, Accurate Quote
That volume estimate flows straight into the rest of the quote form, so the customer sees a meaningful result immediately:
- The estimated volume automatically sizes the right truck for the move.
- The quote and pricing update instantly from the AI’s figure.
- A traditional manual inventory calculator remains available as a fallback or cross-check.
- The customer gets a realistic estimate in seconds, with no in-home survey.
Secure by Design
The integration was built so the AI does its work safely and privately. Requests run through a secure server-side function, meaning the AI credentials never reach the customer’s browser, uploads are validated before processing, and the feature degrades gracefully to the manual calculator if anything is unavailable.
The Result
The removals company now offers something most of its competitors don’t: a genuinely instant, photo-based moving estimate that customers can complete themselves in under a minute.
It removes friction from the quoting process, reduces the need for time-consuming site visits, and gives customers a volume figure they can trust, all while keeping a manual option for anyone who prefers it.
Benefits Delivered
- Instant moving-volume estimates from a few room photos.
- No manual item-by-item inventory count required.
- Fewer time-consuming in-home or video surveys.
- Automatic truck sizing and pricing from the AI estimate.
- A transparent, itemised breakdown behind every number.
- A manual calculator retained as a fallback and cross-check.
- A faster, lower-friction quote that helps convert more enquiries.
Why This Project Matters
Estimating a job accurately is one of the most time-consuming parts of running a service business, and getting it wrong costs money on both sides.
This project shows how modern vision AI can be applied to a very practical, everyday problem: reading photos the way a trained estimator would, and turning them into a fast, reliable quote. It’s a clear example of building AI into an existing workflow to save time, improve accuracy, and give customers a noticeably better experience.
Services Provided
Technology Stack
Quote Form
- Angular
- TypeScript
- Volume calculator & truck-size gauge
- Vercel hosting
AI Estimation
- Vision-capable AI model
- Photo-based volume detection
- Structured (schema-validated) AI output
- Standard AU removalist volume values
Security & Reliability
- Server-side function (API key never exposed to the browser)
- Upload validation & format checks
- Graceful fallback to the manual calculator