After a close race, Oz just won the Republican primary for U.S. Senator in Pennsylvania. His ties to the state run through his wife Lisa’s ultra-wealthy family. Here is the definitive Forbes profile of the Asplundhs.
Trump-backed Dr. Mehmet Oz won the Republican primary in the Pennsylvania Senate race, after his opponent, the former CEO of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates Dave McCormick, conceded on Friday evening as a recount neared its completion.
Oz is known nationally as the retired physician-turned-television-personality who became famous largely thanks to his ties to Oprah Winfrey. The talk show host regularly featured him as a guest on her Oprah show and she co-produced the Dr. Oz Show, which won 10 Daytime Emmys over a 12-year run that ended in early 2022, when he pulled out to focus on his political campaign.
He has made a fortune from TV—$9.3 million in pretax earnings last year alone, according to a government financial disclosure. He also raked in just under $1 million last year for speeches and appearances for the likes of Warner Bros. and the American Pistachio Growers Association, as well as from royalties for a medical device he patented with colleagues at Columbia University, where he was a professor of surgery.
But much of Oz’s fortune, not to mention his ties to Pennsylvania, come from a different source: His wife’s wealthy family. Her grandfather cofounded Asplundh Tree Expert with his two brothers in 1928. With $4.7 billion in revenue, Asplundh is now the 98th biggest private company in America and the fifth largest in Pennsylvania, with more than 33,000 employees. The 93-year-old company, which trims trees for electric utilities, municipalities and others, is run by the third generation of Asplundhs and owned by nearly 200 family members – who are collectively worth at least $3 billion.
That probably helps explain why the celebrity doctor was able to fund his campaign with $12.1 million of personal loans and another $1.7 million of contributions, the sort of money that most wouldn’t consider throwing away unless they knew they had an especially large stash as backup.
Oz, who is the son of Turkish immigrants and also has Turkish citizenship, got his MD and MBA at UPenn in 1986 and lived for years in New Jersey. He only registered to vote in Pennsylvania in December 2020, using his in-laws address.
A spokesperson for Asplundh Tree Expert told Forbes that “the company is not in any way involved in or invested in [Dr. Oz’s] campaign or any other political campaign.” However, “individuals within the organization may support political parties or candidates.” According to Federal Election Commission records, at least 18 members of the Asplundh clan contributed a total of $62,200 to his senate campaign on behalf of themselves and their spouses (the limit for individual contributions is $2,900).
Forbes began tracking the tree-trimming family—and the unusual way they have gotten and stayed rich—more than a quarter of a century ago. Here’s our definitive, October 16, 1995 profile of the Asplundh family—“Let Asplundh Do It”—republished in full.
By Randall Lane
"YOU'VE GOTTA BE KIDDING!" laughs Christopher Asplundh when a FORBES reporter requests an interview. "Who the heck's gonna be interested in a bunch of tree-trimmers?"
We are, for one, and we think a lot of our readers will be, too, for Asplundh Tree Expert Co. is an extraordinary company. Headquartered in Willow Grove, Pa., this $900 million (revenues) outfit is essentially owned by 132 shareholders, all of whom are members of the Asplundh family — as are all the board members.
Even the name is redolent of things arboreal: Asplundh in Swedish means "aspen grove." The business is conservatively valued at $500 million, but may well be worth as much as $700 million.
Just a bunch of tree-trimmers? Asplundh's customers include over 250 telephone and electric utility companies in 50 states and eight foreign countries, all of whom require trees to be trimmed in enormous volume. About 60% of Asplundh's sales come from trimming trees near these customers' lines, the rest from such services as maintaining telephone poles, clearing rights-of-way and installing underground lines.
Asplundh Tree's founders would not have known the term, but they were pioneers in what is now called "outsourcing." Most of these companies could hire their own tree-trimming staffs, but Asplundh does it for them cheaper and better.
This unconventional business was founded by three brothers: Griffith, Carl and Lester Asplundh, who got into tree-trimming to finance their educations after their Swedish immigrant father died.
Griffith majored in forestry at Penn State, Carl studied finance at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and Lester was a football star at Swarthmore while learning electrical engineering.
The boys decided to go into business for themselves, and what they knew best was — tree-trimming. In 1928 they borrowed $2,500 from a local bank and formed Asplundh Tree Expert. Griff oversaw the trimming; Carl minded the books; Les provided technical expertise and research and development.
Early in the Asplundh boys focused: Tree-trimming for residential customers was a good business but crowded. The three Asplundh brothers concentrated on business customers, clearing tree branches away from the overhead lines of the fast-growing electric and telephone companies. Their first contract was to trim 500 trees for Pennsylvania Power & Light. "The electric companies will always pay their bills," bookkeeper Carl Asplundh would say. "Mrs. Jones might not."
Mrs. Jones pulled in her belt during the 1930s Depression, but the electric and telephone industries continued to expand. Equipped with what was then the latest technology — hand-cranked aerial platforms and early-model chainsaws developed by brother Les — by 1936 the company had added customers as far south as South Carolina, as far west as Illinois.
After World War II Asplundh invented the first wood chipper, which made clearing areas faster and easier.
The first union for Asplundh workers was organized in 1951. In the glory days of trade unionism in the 1960s and 1970s, the labor situation periodically turned nasty, and there was rock-throwing violence.
When employees struck at the company's equipment manufacturing plant in 1984, the company shut it down and moved the division to North Carolina. It was subsequently sold. Today unions represent just 20% of Asplundh's almost 20,000 employees, down from a peak of 50% in 1970.
By 1968 the founding brothers were retired or dead, and a second generation had taken over. Barr Asplundh, Griff's son, was elected president, and seven brothers and cousins were on the board of directors. Edward Asplundh, Carl's son, followed him in 1981. Cris Asplundh, the youngest of the second generation, took over in 1992, with nine members of the third generation serving in key roles.
As the third generation has moved up the ranks, the company has had its greatest growth, with revenues swelling from just $100 million in 1984 to this year's $900 million. Over this period, Asplundh expanded its client base and line of services. Asplundh also grew through acquisition, notably the 1992 purchase of $100 million (sales) competitor Sepco. All this time it didn't neglect its old clients: Four of the company's first five customers have contracted with Asplundh continuously since its inception; 20 more utilities have been customers for the past 50 years.
After estate taxes, a family company's most lethal enemy is family squabbling over the wealth piled up by previous generations. The Asplundh way of avoiding this kind of discord is as creative as it is effective. They call it the "sponsor system." The 16 Asplundhs at the company, even the president, oversee (sponsor) regions of the company. No cushy spots in personnel or marketing. If you don't manage a profit center, then you don't work at Asplundh. Says Chris Asplundh: "No one is above failure and success."
This is unabashed nepotism, because only an Asplundh can become a sponsor, but it is highly disciplined nepotism, too. An Asplundh who wants to work for the company must first finish college, then must do something else for three years before applying for a position. He (there are no shes) can spend those three years working for somebody else, traveling or working for an advanced degree. Then the aspirant must get recommendations from three family members, at least one of whom must be a board member.
The successful aspirant still doesn't have it made. There follows a tough eight-year training program. Does everyone pass it? No way. Three Asplundhs have dropped out or been asked to leave the training program in the past decade.
Brent Asplundh's experience is typical. The 34-year-old nephew of Chris Asplundh started working for the company as a tree-trimmer servicing Philadelphia Electric Co.'s lines. He then supervised Asplundh crews in Delaware and Tampa, Fla. After four years he was sent to oversee 200 workers in East Texas, before returning to Delaware as manager of a 300-employee division.
Upon graduation from the training program in 1992, Brent moved to Asplundh's Willow Grove headquarters, where he's now a sponsor for seven regions, including New York City and northern California. "The company is extremely demanding," says Brent Asplundh. "If you don't want to do it, then this isn't the place to be."
That's one reason barely one in ten of the shareholders work for the company. Other family members who have inherited the stock are simply passive investors (just under 20% of the company is technically owned by employees, but it's more like a pension, because workers must sell back their stock at book value upon leaving the company).
To say that this is a tough business is an understatement. Asplundh has almost 20,000 employees and hundreds of accounts. One felled branch can knock out electric and phone service for tens of thousands of utility customers, all of whom get hopping mad at any service interruptions. Too many such mishaps and the utility company will look elsewhere for its tree service.
It is when a storm disrupts service that Asplundh really shines. No utility company could afford to keep standby crews for such occasional emergencies, but Asplundh can simply shift armies of tree workers to any trouble spot. Over 7,000 Asplundh workers were deployed from East Texas to Delaware to repair lines damaged by the northeastern ice storms in February 1994. After Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992, Asplundh sent 3,000 workers from relatively peaceful regions to restore service.
Thus the company monitors every storm in the country from a weather center at the Willow Grove headquarters. "Santa Ana winds in California, that's our problem," says Chris Asplundh. "Nor'easter in Boston, that's our problem; ice storm in Minnesota, that's our problem.
The fourth generation of Asplundhs is just beginning to enter college; there are 65 of them. How much longer can the company maintain its unique and highly successful nepotism? Under the sponsorship system, only a few will get jobs at the company. Some younger family members currently receive less than $10,000 a year in dividends. Most of the earnings, estimated at $36 million this year, get plowed back into the business. Because of the generous plowback, the family does not have to go outside for capital and the company has no long-term debt. But if a shareholder wants to cash out, the only likely buyer is Asplundh Tree, and the company pays only conservatively stated book value. Being an Asplundh certainly is no guarantee of affluence.
To maximize the opportunities for family members, Chris Asplundh is seeking to expand the business by adding new services. As telephone companies have shifted from aboveground phone lines to underground fiber-optic cable, Asplundh has offered to install the new cables, and is already billing $30 million a year in line installation. Electric companies now can hire Asplundh employees to read meters. Asplundh helicopters equipped with infrared cameras can detect heat buildups in power lines, thus signaling that a line failure is imminent.
Benefiting from the pressure on politicians to make tax dollars work harder, Asplundh has begun to get a lot of business from municipalities, too. It coordinates traffic-light sequences in Philadelphia, for example, and trims the trees in New York's Central Park.
All told, Asplundh Tree's revenues from services other than tree trimming will come to around $400 million this year, up from $42 million a decade ago. They're likely to keep growing rapidly as newly deregulated telephone and electric companies search for ways to cut costs.
"If the electric and telephone companies are looking to outsource something," says Chris Asplundh, "then we are looking to provide that service."
Wouldn't it be simpler just to go public and be like most other businesses? "Then we'd just have money," Chris Asplundh responds. "That isn't what this family is about."
