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Overnight mail delivery in Chicago still isn't as good as it is across the nation, but it's no longer the worst in the country.

In 2006 and 2007, mail was often delivered to the wrong address, or as late as 11:30 p.m., or not at all.

Mail sent between city ZIP codes made it to the correct address by the next day just 91 percent of the time between June and September 2006, the Chicago Sun-Times reported then, placing Chicago at the bottom of the heap nationally.

And the mail-delivery problems only grew worse in early 2007, when in-town letters were delivered overnight just 89 percent of the time, according to U.S. Postal Service audits.

When aldermen, congressmen and the U.S. postmaster general demanded swift improvement, Chicago's postmaster, Gloria Tyson, used the newspaper's reports to improve things.

"You helped us do it, thank you," said Tyson, who keeps a poster-sized reproduction in her office of a Sun-Times front page that bore the bad news. "It's been in my office since it hit the newsstand, and it's kind of a motivator that we use. I had the front page reproduced and sent to every plant and every station in every district, so the people there know our customers expect more than that from us, and we will give it to them. I see it in my office every day."

Since then, the Postal Service in Chicago has hired 500 new mail carriers, overhauled faulty mail-sorting machines and trained delivery supervisors to keep better tabs on how the mail was being picked up, sorted and delivered.

The result: Letters mailed from one Chicago ZIP code to another got there by the next day 96 percent of the time, according to a Postal Service audit of service between July and August.

That's still one percentage point below the national average, though.

"I realize that we still have more to do, and we will continue to improve," said Tyson, promising that service won't ever return to how bad it was a few years ago. "We will never go back there. Never."

One of the major problems before was that mail picked up from corner drop boxes wouldn't get processed and delivered to district stations early enough the next morning for carriers to complete their routes on time. Some folks reported carriers wearing head lamps and delivering mail at nearly midnight.

Now, delivery protocols have been changed, Tyson said, to ensure that mail is sorted on time overnight and delivered to district post offices the next morning in time for carriers to make deliveries before suppertime.

"We want to make sure our carriers are off the street and back with their families at 5 p.m., the end of business," Tyson said.

After the Sun-Times report in 2007, Postmaster General John Potter visited Chicago and promised the city would "start seeing change" almost immediately. And U.S. Rep. Danny Davis promised to hold them accountable. Davis said he's happy with the progress.

"It's a tremendous improvement," Davis said. "We still get complaints from time to time. We're not saying they're perfect ... but we're happy with the kind of results we're seeing. Now, we won't rest with it . ... I don't want to see any relaxation, especially with the holidays coming."

Chicago resident David Allen said he's relieved that he has started getting his bills and packages on time -- and at a decent hour. Allen said things got rough for a time when his dog, Tiger, was ailing, and he couldn't count on next-day delivery of the dog's anti-diarrhea medication -- mailed from his veterinarian's office just 15 blocks away.

"Their response to complaints has been great," Allen said. "The mail usually comes by 1 or 2."