[SURBL-Discuss] Is spamd broken?

Folks here probably remember me whining about never once seeing a surbl hit in my spam even after wadeing thru hundreds of spams.

Several users gave me hints which I dutifully carried out (thanks guys). John Fawcett even sent me a spammer's web URI that was guarenteed to trigger the Spamcop URI code and it did when fired off manually with a command line like /usr/bin/spamassassin -D -t < message-file > output-file 2>&1

BUT STILL no Surbl hits.

Just as a lark I remove the spamd line from my procmailrc and replaced it with /usr/bin/spamassassin -a

AND IT WORKS?

So, what's wrong with spamd? Is it not capable of handling anything but the basic rules?