I've mentioned the sand and gravel operation that I traded some property with several month's ago. The neighbor to my new property claimed the gravel pit was trying to sell the property a couple years ago because they needed the money. I knew it was BS. I just read a report from some publication about the sand and gravel operation. It said it would be hard for someone else to come in and duplicate their business. 85% of their business is sand for fracing. They have 4 or 5 hubs plus their main operation. They own 3600 acres and lease another 4000. They have over 100 metric tonnes of sand and sell about 1.2 million tonnes a year. Just their equipment alone would cost $160-$190 million dollars. Definitely not a small operation or hurting for money.
Hurting for money has nothing to do with size. Big broke or small broke still = broke. Not saying they are, but big has nothing to do with it. Joe H
Placer mining is a lot like that. It is not so much "how many oz of gold did you get"....BUT...what is your profit (if any) after all expenses...
Irc you traded property with them, sounds like it was a location problem and either fine sand was running low where you are at now or the location of the haul and where the frac jobs were at. You typically frac a well only once
They haul about 170,000 metric tons a month. Last year or maybe the year before they bought a new Volvo 350 loader. They typically buy new trucks every 3 or 4 years. They also supply sand to cement plants and golf courses. They offered me well over market value for my property. They aren't hurting by any means.
Just re-read your statement a few times. Pretty likely that there is nothing substantial under the surface of your new property (that doesn't matter to you, you've never said you want to sell sand), but it's probably very likely there is plenty under your old property. That, or the access you talked about will make them more money than they would spend going somewhere else.
The property (80 acres) North of my old property apparently has a lot of sand but is mostly bush. If they want that sand makes sense why they were so eager for my property. It gives them a direct route to their main plant. It's rather bizarre that around my old property is a lot of sand but mine didn't have much. More sand would have certainly let me be open more and not so affected by rain. The new property is worth substantially more money and is higher ground. Going through all the hoops to get it approved for a dirt bike track is an expensive PIA though.
I just realized I made a typo. The land with sand was West of my property not North. The rezoning and getting everything approved is just a giant PIA. There are no other options than to rezone if people are paying to ride.