Summary: We introduce a new model called the Weibull-Lomax distribution which extends the Lomax distribution and has increasing and decreasing shapes for the hazard rate function. Various structural properties of the new distribution are derived including explicit expressions for the moments and incomplete moments, Bonferroni and Lorenz curves, mean deviations, mean residual life, mean waiting time, probability weighted moments, generating and quantile function. The Rényi and \(q\) entropies are also obtained. We provide the density function of the order statistics and their moments. The model parameters are estimated by the method of maximum likelihood and the observed information matrix is determined. The potentiality of the new model is illustrated by means of two real life data sets. For these data, the new model outperforms the McDonald-Lomax,Kumaraswamy-Lomax, gamma-Lomax, beta-Lomax, exponentiated Lomax and Lomax models.