That's messed, the database is supposed to have ALL the friggen north american zips/postal codes.
Ok gentlemen, through my leet sun-tzu computer skills I have identified the problem:
mysql> select * from tblZipCodes;
Empty set (0.00 sec)
I can say for certain, that if the zip codes table is empty, it will not work. That means, I have to re import the mutha. Done.
Hope it all works well from now on.