Asplundh Tree Expert, LLC is an American company which specializes in tree pruning and vegetation management for utilities and government agencies. The company also performs utility line construction and maintenance, electrical systems testing,

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and highway lighting construction and maintenance, automated metering infrastructure and home

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program implementation.Profile
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History

The Asplundh Tree Expert Co. was founded in 1928 in

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

by brothers Griffith, Lester and Carl Asplundh, members of a Swedish-American family who combined their educations and experience in arboriculture, electrical engineering and finance. The company specialized in "trimming trees around power and telephone lines." It was the first company to specialize in utility line clearance and vegetation management instead of residential services. In 1940, the first issue of ''The Asplundh TREE'' magazine was issued to crews; the magazine is still being published.Our History
at asplundh.com By this time the company had expanded from Pennsylvania to the Midwest and the Middle Atlantic states. In 1956, a subsidiary company, Asplundh Brush Control Co., was established. In 1990, Asplundh acquired New York based B & J Maintenance Co., Inc, as well as L. Fulcher Electric, which was over five small clearance firms in France which became Asplundh's French subsidiary. Also during this year, the company expanded to New Zealand, acquiring Electrix Limited, which changed its name to Electrix Asplundh. By 1994 it had become the US's largest firm in utility clearance and one of the nation's largest privately held companies. Lisa (Lemole) Oz, the wife of former Pennsylvania senatorial candidate and television personality

Mehmet Oz Mehmet Cengiz Öz (; born June 11, 1960), known professionally as Dr. Oz (), is an Turkish American former professor of cardiothoracic surgery at Columbia University, television presenter, author and former political candidate. The son of Tur ...

, is the maternal granddaughter of one of the cofounders.

Illegal hiring

In 2017, the company pleaded guilty to a federal criminal charge and was ordered to pay a $95 million fine, the largest ever in an immigration case. This was after an investigation by

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is a federal law enforcement agency under the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. ICE's stated mission is to protect the United States from the cross-border crime and illegal immigration tha ...

found that Asplundh hired thousands of

illegal immigrants Illegal immigration is the migration of people into a country in violation of the immigration laws of that country or the continued residence without the legal right to live in that country. Illegal immigration tends to be financially upwa ...

between 2010 and 2014. The illegal hiring was first uncovered in a 2009 audit, and although Asplundh did dismiss the workers that same year, many of the same workers were rehired by their managers after using

fraudulent In law, fraud is intentional deception to secure unfair or unlawful gain, or to deprive a victim of a legal right. Fraud can violate civil law (e.g., a fraud victim may sue the fraud perpetrator to avoid the fraud or recover monetary compens ...

documents. "We accept responsibility for the charges as outlined, and we apologize to our customers, associates and all other stakeholders for what has occurred," said Chairman and CEO Scott Asplundh in a statement at the time.

References

{{reflist

External links

Official website
Companies based in Philadelphia American companies established in 1928 Privately held companies based in Pennsylvania 1928 establishments in Pennsylvania Illegal immigration to the United States