- Based in Houston, 3 Men Movers is a privately owned moving company.
- The small business uses AI to reduce driver distraction and find the most efficient routes.
- This article is part of "How AI is Changing Everything: Small Business," a series exploring how small businesses are using AI for success.
More than 25 million Americans move each year. And they expect their most precious items to arrive in one piece — whether they're traveling hundreds or thousands of miles.
So moving companies such as Texas' 3 Men Movers are increasingly turning to AI to meet these expectations.
Founded in 1985, long before artificial intelligence was ubiquitous, 3 Men Movers has adapted its business for the digital age. The company started testing and implementing AI-powered solutions in the late 2010s, its CEO, Jacky Fischer, said.
Today, 3 Men Movers uses the technology to detect distracted drivers and optimize route planning. It's just one of the millions of small businesses in the US that leverage AI in their everyday operations, illustrating how much the technology has redefined business.
Creating an AI-powered moving company
Higher insurance costs and steadily growing accident rates led Fischer's team to implement AI. The company also wanted to improve efficiency and reduce costs, critical in the fiercely competitive moving industry.
"To prosper, we had to focus on safety and liability as early as possible," Fischer said in an email interview.
To improve safety, the company installed cameras in the driver's cabin. Live video is transferred to its server through an AI-enabled distracted-driver detection system. The system is trained to recognize when a driver is using a smartphone, eating, drinking, doing some personal grooming, smoking, or even yawning. If it detects distracted behavior, both the driver and the supervisor receive a notification.
In addition, 3 Men Movers uses advanced open-source routing-machine technology, which identifies the best routes between points.
"There is a big misconception that AI was born in 2020 with the launch of ChatGPT," Fischer said. "While it was a major turning point in AI adoption, machine learning and data analytics for OSRM were already used in pioneering industries such as finance, telecommunications, and logistics."
The tech helps drivers at 3 Men Movers avoid high-traffic areas, high-crime zones, places with high crash rates, restricted areas, and even environmental hazards. It also allows the company to route in the most optimal way that will avoid liability and reduce risks, Fischer said.
Balancing AI benefits and risks
So far, implementing AI has paid dividends for 3 Men Movers. Comparing the AI detection reports to manual reports, the company has determined that the distracted driver detection system has an accuracy of 91% and prevents 80% of distractions. In the first three months of use, the system reduced the company's accident rate by 4.5%, according to Fischer.
Despite these results, implementing AI wasn't seamless. One of the biggest challenges, Fischer said, was integrating the distracted-driver detection system. Some of the initial products the company tried returned too many false positives, such as misinterpreting a driver's moving patterns at different speeds.
"It was quite challenging to keep the balance between staying competitive and avoiding more drawbacks than benefits due to adopting bleeding-edge tech," Fischer said. "This is why we always keep an eye on the benchmarks and do microtests before adopting any tech, including AI."
Fischer added that testing is key for any small business adopting AI. She urges other small-business owners to remember the risks of AI. To validate the technology, companies should always ask tech providers for proof points, such as case studies, information on how their results compare with industry benchmarks, and who will be responsible for implementation and false positives or hallucinations, meaning when AI tools deliver misleading or inaccurate results.
Along with testing, Fischer said transparency is critical for AI implementation. Her company is transparent with its team about when, how, and why the AI solution is interacting with them and their data. The company has also created a feedback loop so that every team member can share their suggestions and complaints about each solution.
"AI will only augment and empower," Fischer said, "but it will never replace or lead the people."
