Keep on trucking.

Walmart has announced that it will add more truck drivers to its fleet this year — and pay them well. The retail giant, which says it added 1,400 truckers in 2018, notes that “hundreds more are slated to join the fleet in 2019.”

And the company says that it is raising driver pay in February. “A one cent per mile increase and additional pay for every arrival means that Walmart WMT, -1.02% drivers will now earn on average $87,500 a year and with an all-in rate close to 89 cents per mile.”

To snag a job as a trucker at Walmart, you’ll need “30 months of experience in the past three years and a clean safety record,” the company says.

Though $90,000 for a trucker is high, many truckers earn well above the median U.S. salary. Career site Indeed notes that truckers make an average of nearly $74,000 a year, though government data puts the median at just over $42,000.

And recently they’ve been getting pay raises. Truck driver pay has increased 14% since 2014, according to Glassdoor -- hitting a median of $54,445 in December of 2018.

So what’s going on here? There’s a big truck driver shortage, according to the American Trucking Association — which attributes the shortage to “a multitude of reasons, including demographic, regulatory, and the fact drivers are away from home for a period of time, among other factors.” And last year, a Washington Post report noted that about 51,000 truck drivers were needed to meet demand from companies like Walmart and Amazon AMZN, -1.78% that ship lots of goods. They add that despite pay raises and signing bonuses, often lifestyle factors — like being away from home for long periods — may keep people from taking trucking jobs.

One big reason truck drivers are so in demand is that we’re ordering more online goods than ever, experts say. Indeed, in 2017, online sales of physical goods amounted to $446.8 billion — in 2018 that had jumped to $504.6 billion dollars, and that is projected to hit $735 billion by 2023, according to retail e-commerce sales data from Statista.

Those kinds of numbers mean big demand for truckers who carry those goods to consumers. The American Trucking Association estimates that “71% of all the freight tonnage moved in the U.S. goes on trucks.” And their jobs aren’t going anywhere soon: The government estimates that “employment of heavy and tractor-trailer truck drivers is projected to grow 6% from 2016 to 2026,” adding that “as the demand for goods increases, more truck drivers will be needed to keep supply chains moving.”