Stick,
I live in California. We have an old International Loadstar 1700 at work. It has air brakes. The clean-up man was required to drive this rig and the endorsement wasn't something management wanted to deal with. This whole issue was related not to the fact the rig had air brakes, but to it's GVW. I took the truck to our tire shop where they replaced the front tires with a tire of a lower rating, thus reducing the front axle capacity,which in turn reduced the GVW of the truck. The truck was then taken to a repair facility that had a state issued license to re-certify the the GVW and restamp the tag on the door.
I have used the term GVW, but I don't know if that is the proper name for the value that was changed. In this case, the different tires made the max capacity of the truck less which negated the need for an endorsement.
Stuart.
