Pghgardner
A quality nursery will take seedling trees or even yearlings that may have been grown in raised beds. They will field plant these with reasonable spacing to develop stronger, thicker trunks. During the dormant season they will dig up these trees, cut back the tap root, and tip cut the strong lateral roots to promote strong root growth. At the same time they will take soft tip cuttings from the top and strong lateral branches. Taking soft tip cuttings will allow a new, strong apical tip to develop and not give the appearance of a deformed trunk. Sometimes they will even remove the opposing bud so the two don't compete. They will remove any weak or deformed branches. Some of these trees might be sold off as bare root dormant, or potted up into nursery pots to be sold off the following spring. These are typically the best growing of their original trees. The rest will be returned to the field, given more space and grown on. They may repeat this process for as much as 5 years, depending on how much acreage they have to do so. This results in shapely, healthy, well grown specimens. This is why quality nurseries charge so much for their trees, a lot of work goes into growing nice specimens.
A low budget nursery will field plant but not do the dormant season work. Typically they plant too close together and all the trees struggle and don't grow well. These trees may develop some lateral branching but typically these branches are on opposing sides and grow out into the open rows, and have no branches growing perpendicularly as their neighboring trees block out the light. After a period of years when the trees have neared the size they desired they will take hard cuttings of the apical tip to try to induce more branching. If you look closely at your tree, you'll see there are some of these stronger branches growing opposite. These too have been hacked hard, as they were probably very long and lanky. This is the budget nursery's effort to make a weak tree look bushy and healthy. You'll notice most of the lower, longer branches are weak in comparison to the few, hacked off stronger branches, and some are water spouts. These weaker branches will not develop into strong branches, and the strong branches will be deprived nutrients by the weaker branches.
Your four tip branches are two that were the strongest original laterals and two more that developed from adventitious buds growing from the base of the stronger ones. None of these will ever truly be an apical tip, one may be trained to grow more upright than lateral but it will remain a weak point of the tree. As it grows, gets heavy, develops more lateral branches, it will weigh heavily on it's attachment to the trunk. Eventually it will give way, most likely during a strong wind storm. I'm sorry to say, there is little to be done to make this a quality specimen. The damage was done way before you purchased it and it was probably intentional that you weren't able to get a close look before delivery.
I have such a nursery not that far from me. She advertises heavily and uses stock photos of healthy specimens to entice people to come to her nursery. She does sell a lot of poor quality plants, at budget prices to an unsuspecting public. To find quality trees at a quality nursery or garden center you could pay 3 to 4 times the price. Not surprising with her budget trees, and pricing to match, that she sells a lot of stock.
