Aggregate Landman & Property Acquisition | Aggregate Consulting LLC

Aggregate Consulting, LLC provides landman and property acquisition support for sand, gravel, limestone, quarry, and construction materials development projects. The service is built for operators, investors, lenders, and acquisition groups who need to understand both the deposit and the land position before lease, purchase, option, or development commitments. All prospect work is treated as confidential.

Aggregate deposit acquisition is not just about finding rock, sand, gravel, or limestone. A deposit can look attractive geologically and still fail as a project because of ownership problems, severed mineral rights, surface and mineral conflicts, access limitations, easement issues, title defects, poorly structured leases, unclear royalty terms, or incomplete land control. Our work combines operator-level aggregate experience with senior landman experience to evaluate both the physical deposit and the land position before a client commits capital.

Why Land Position Matters in Aggregate Projects

Aggregate is a local, logistics-sensitive, land-control-sensitive business. The economics depend on haul distance to market, on whether the operator actually controls enough acreage to mine through the reserve life, and on whether the surface, the mineral, and the access are all legally tied together. Common land-side risks that quietly kill aggregate projects include:

Fragmented ownership across multiple tracts
Severed mineral estates where surface and minerals are held by different parties
Access constraints, including unclear or limited legal access to a haul route
Easements, pipelines, utilities, and other encumbrances that restrict the mining footprint
Title defects requiring curative work
Royalty terms that look workable on paper but are punitive once production starts
Surface and mineral conflicts that create operational or legal friction during mining
Zoning, setback, and permitting constraints tied to the land position
Multi-tract acquisition gaps where one missing parcel breaks the mining plan

The Consultant and Senior Landman Model

John M. Pitts, Jr. brings 36+ years of hands-on aggregate ownership, operating, reserve evaluation, plant, dredge, and due diligence experience. Shawn S. Scholl, Senior Landman, brings 30 years of land experience across acquisitions, divestitures, title work, and long-term land position strategy. Together that is the operator, the buyer, the seller, and the landman in the same room, evaluating the resource, the land control, the surface and mineral position, access, lease structure, royalty exposure, and development feasibility on the same prospect.

Shawn S. Scholl, Senior Landman

Shawn holds a B.B.A. in Petroleum Land Management from the University of Oklahoma and has spent 30 years working across all facets of the land business, including surface and mineral rights acquisition, title research, leasing, negotiations, curative work, due diligence, ownership verification, right-of-way and easement coordination, acquisition strategy, option agreements, stakeholder relations, and the management and disposition of land and mineral assets. He has handled complex land and mineral portfolios involving acquisitions, divestitures, and long-term land position strategy for energy, mining, and development projects. (See About for the full team bio.)

One area where Shawn is particularly effective is off-market landowner identification. Many of the best aggregate tracts are owned by parties who are not actively in the market: heirs, absentee owners, multi-generational family holdings, or owners whose property has simply never been listed. Identifying the right owner of the right tract, researching the ownership across fragmented or complex records, and opening a professional, respectful conversation is often what turns an expansion or a greenfield prospect into an actual project. For operators expanding adjacent to an existing pit or quarry, and for groups pursuing a greenfield acquisition where the right deposit sits under land that has never been offered, that initial identification and outreach work is frequently the single step that makes the deal possible.

Legal matters are coordinated with the client’s counsel. Aggregate Consulting does not practice law or provide legal advice.

Services May Include

Surface and mineral ownership research
Title research and ownership verification
Off-market landowner identification and outreach for expansion and greenfield acquisition
Multi-tract land position review
Lease, option, and purchase support
Royalty and lease term review from a land and control standpoint
Easement and right-of-way coordination
Access and haul-route land considerations
Curative issue identification
Landowner and stakeholder coordination
Acquisition strategy and prospect tracking
Coordination with attorneys, surveyors, geologists, engineers, and operators

Common Problems We Help Identify

Securing surface rights without understanding mineral ownership
Assuming access exists when legal access is limited or unclear
Failing to account for easements, pipelines, utilities, or encumbrances
Poorly structured royalty language
Fragmented ownership across multiple tracts
Lease terms that do not match the mining plan
Option agreements that expire before technical due diligence is complete
Land positions that look good on a map but are not operationally practical

How This Supports Deposit Acquisition and Due Diligence

Landman work sits next to the technical work, not separate from it. On a prospect, the land review runs in parallel with the geology, the reserve estimate, and the operational and market review. That coordination is what keeps option clocks, drilling programs, title curative work, and acquisition decisions on the same calendar. The Landman service connects directly to Deposit Acquisition Consulting, Due Diligence, Reserve Valuation, Geology Services, Royalty & Lease Advisory, and Expert Witness & Litigation Support.

Engagement Format

Engagements run from a half-day phone consult to a multi-week land position review. Courthouse research, site visits, and remote engagements are all options depending on the prospect and the timeline. All prospect work is treated as confidential.

Discuss a Prospect

Call 940-341-2011 or contact us to discuss landman support, mineral and surface ownership review, or property acquisition strategy for an aggregate, sand, gravel, limestone, or quarry project.

Aggregate Landman Services & Mining Property Acquisition