Wicomico County, MD Soliciting & Door-to-Door: Solicitor Permits (2026)

Wicomico County's peddlers chapter makes it unlawful for any person to conduct the business of, or act as, an itinerant or door-to-door peddler or salesman of goods, wares or merchandise, whether by sample or otherwise, without first securing and holding a current license issued by the Sheriff of Wicomico County. The Sheriff prepares and keeps available the application forms needed to maintain a proper and complete listing of everyone engaged in peddling in the county. The license costs $25 for each year and is not prorated for partial years; the license year runs from January 1.

Every licensee must carry the license and exhibit it to any officer or citizen on request, a provision that puts enforcement in the hands of the public as well as the Sheriff's Office. The chapter exempts two categories from the licensing requirement entirely: anyone going door to door on behalf of a nonprofit, charitable or eleemosynary agency or organization, and anyone going door to door selling farm produce or seafood that they personally produced or took. A general reference in the chapter points to Chapter 213, Transient Merchants, as a related but separate regulatory scheme, and to the state Business Regulations Article's hawkers-and-peddlers provisions starting at § 17-901, though the county's own licensing scheme is what actually governs unlicensed peddling within Wicomico County.

Penalties are modest but real: violating any provision of the peddlers chapter is a misdemeanor, and a conviction carries a fine not to exceed $25 for each violation, a flat cap rather than a range, distinguishing this chapter from the county's more common civil-infraction penalty structure used elsewhere in the code.