Congress passed a law requiring true odometer disclosures on transfers of vehicles. The Secretary of Transportation wrote a regulation exempting large trucks. We hold that the regulation is invalid.

FACTS

Orea Bay Seafoods bought a truck in which the odometer showed much less than the true mileage, so it sued the used truck dealer from which it bought the truck, Northwest Truck Sales, and the truck’s previous owner, Kamco, Inc. Orea bought the truck from Northwest in 1989, which had bought it a few days earlier from Kamco. It was a 1987 Mercedes diesel weighing more than 27,500 pounds with around 126,000 miles on it. The odometer showed only about 24,000 miles when Orea purchased it.

Congress passed a law to require true odometer readings, or disclosure that actual mileage is unknown. Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act, Pub.L. No. 92-513, 86 Stat. 961 (1972) (codified as amended at 15 U.S.C. §§ 1981-91 ). The Secretary of Transportation exempted transfers of trucks with gross vehicle weight ratings of more than 16,000 pounds. 15 C.F.R. § 580.6 (a)(1). The magistrate judge dismissed Orca’s statutory claim because the regulation exempts large trucks such as the one at issue. Orea claims that the exemption is void, because the statute does not allow for it. The question is whether this exemption was within the Secretary’s power to grant. We hold that it was not — the regulation exempting large trucks is void.

ANALYSIS

The question, whether the large truck exemption is void, is one of first impression for us. No circuit has yet decided it, and district courts are divided. Compare Davis v. Dils Motor Co., 566 F.Supp. 1360, 1362-63 (S.D.W.Va.1983) (holding the exemption for large trucks invalid); Lair v. Lewis Serv. Ctr., Inc., 428 F.Supp. 778, 781 (D.Neb.1977) (same) with Mitchell v. White Motor Credit Corp., 627 F.Supp. 1241, 1247-50 (M.D.Tenn.1986) (upholding the regulation). We agree with Judge Urbom’s careful analysis in Lair .

The Vehicle Information and Cost Savings Act commands the Secretary to promulgate odometer disclosure rules for “any transfer- or” of “a motor vehicle”:

15 U.S.C. § 1988 (a). The word “transfer” is defined as any change in ownership “by purchase, gift or any other means.” 15 U.S.C. § 1982 (5). “Any transferor” is not limited to dealers. The term “dealer” is defined separately. 15 U.S.C. § 1982 (1). The terms “any transferor” and “transfer” allow for no exception for transferors of large trucks.

Nor does the term “motor vehicle” allow for an exception for large trucks. Congress distinguished “passenger motor vehicle” from “motor vehicle.” 15 U.S.C. § 1901 (1), (15). It defined “motor vehicle” in a way which includes large trucks:

15 U.S.C. § 1901 (15) (emphasis added). Congress told the secretary to require odometer disclosure for “any” transferor of a “motor vehicle.” The word “any” and the comprehensive definition of “motor vehicle” rebuts the suggestion that transferors of large trucks may be exempted.

The Secretary of Transportation nevertheless exempted certain kinds of vehicles, among them large trucks. The administrative regulation allows transferors of some vehicles not to disclose the true odometer mileage:

49 C.F.R. § 580.6 (emphasis added).

The Secretary had a rational policy reason for the large truck exemption. He determined that buyers of large trucks use the maintenance history, not the odometer, as a guide to its expected useful life and maintenance requirements.

38 Fed.Reg. 2978 (1973).

But rationality is not enough. The Secretary needed authority. The large truck regulation must fall because Congress did not delegate to the Secretary of Transportation the power to exempt large trucks.

The truck seller argues that the Secretary’s reasoning is consistent with the purpose of the statute. This may be so. The express statutory purpose is protection of buyers’ reliance on odometers:

15 U.S.C. § 1981 . Kamco makes the logical argument that if people do not rely on odometers when they purchase large trucks, then protection of such reliance by the odometer statute would be purposeless.

We venture no judgment on whether the Secretary’s judgment about who relies on odometers is correct, or whether exemptions should be granted for vehicles for which buyers generally do not rely on odometer readings. It is enough that Congress did not delegate power to grant the large truck exemption. Congress could, and did, make a contrary judgment, and its policy reason was also rational. Maybe some buyers of used trucks do look at the odometers to see how much the trucks have been driven. Maybe some buyers of ten year old cars disagree with the Secretary’s judgment that, for example, the value of a 1983 Ford Escort depends solely on its “age, condition, and scarcity, and ... the odometer mileage is irrelevant.” Despite our skepticism about the breadth of the “antique” ear exception, we do not decide on the validity of subsections of the regulations not before us in this case.

The truck seller’s argument applies this mode of construction:

This approach is necessarily wrong. It is one thing to construe the statutory language “to see whether one construction makes more sense than the other as a means of attributing a rational purpose to Congress.” Longview Fibre Co. v. Rasmussen, 980 F.2d 1307, 1311 (9th Cir.1992). It is quite another to treat the purpose, and not the operative words of the statute, as the law. In this case, an attributed purpose of not exempting large trucks is rational. We would be writing a different statute, not just construing it, by “treating the words as having no meaning and looking instead to the values underlying the language to be construed so that we can create law effectuating those values.” United States v. Martinez-Cano, 6 F.3d 1400, 1405 (9th Cir.1993) (dissent).

Deference to administrative agencies under Chevron U.S.A., Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 844 , 104 S.Ct. 2778, 2782-83 , 81 L.Ed.2d 694 (1984) will not save the regulation. Chevron deference only operates if there is ambiguity or silence in the statute:

Id. at 842-43 , 104 S.Ct. at 2781-82 (footnotes omitted).

In the statute at issue, Congress left no gap, no silence, no ambiguity, so “we must give effect to the plain language that Congress chose.” United States v. Geyler, 949 F.2d 280, 283 (9th Cir.1991). The regulation is contrary to the will of Congress as expressed in the governing statute.

If we were to defer to the Secretary’s judgment about the wisdom of exempting large trucks, despite Congress’s determination not to exempt them, we would in effect allow lobbyists to appeal from the legislative to the executive branch after a bill has become a law. Chevron deference applies where “Congress has explicitly left a gap for the agency to fill,” which is an “express delegation,” or “the legislative delegation to an agency on a particular question is implicit.” Chevron, 467 U.S. at 843-44 , 104 S.Ct. at 2782 . The executive branch is not a tribunal to whieh affected interests can appeal adverse legislative judgments. For all we know, the same trucking interests mentioned by the Secretary in his explanation made the same arguments to Congress, lost, and then asked the Secretary to undo what they saw as a legislative misjudgment. Congress might write an insufficiently nuaneed law and over regulate an industry. It has the power to make that kind of policy mistake. We do not intimate that Congress made any mistake. Congress may have been more responsive to the interests of vehicle buyers and less to vehicle sellers than the Secretary, and better balanced their differing interests. Whether the policy judgment was right or wrong, Congress made it, and did not delegate it to the Secretary to make, so that is the end of the matter.

REVERSED and REMANDED.