24/48 and 48/96 schedules

What these schedules are

Both cover a post continuously with three crews on twenty-four hour tours. They differ only in how the tours are grouped.

On a 24/48, a crew works one tour then takes two days off — a three-day cycle. On a 48/96, a crew works two tours back to back then takes four days off — a six-day cycle.

The hours are identical either way. What changes is whether your time off arrives in two-day pieces or four-day blocks.

How the cycle runs

The 24/48 cycle, twice through:

Print this rotation (PDF) One page — the cycle above, and a blank grid for your own dates.

48/96 and the four-day break

The 48/96 takes the same arithmetic and rearranges it: forty-eight hours on, ninety-six off. Two full days at the station, then four days clear.

Crews that switch to it rarely want to go back, because four consecutive days off is enough for real travel or a solid block of paid duty work. The argument against it is the second consecutive twenty-four hour tour, which comes at the end of an already long stretch.

Both patterns drift through the week, since neither three nor six divides into seven.

Hours and overtime

Both average fifty-six hours a week. Fire and EMS agencies generally work under extended work-period rules that set the overtime threshold well above forty.

That makes personal hour tracking more valuable, not less — the threshold is unusual enough that errors are easy to miss.

Who works them

Twenty-four hour tours are the norm across the fire service:

• Fire departments
• EMS and ambulance
• Airport rescue and firefighting
• Industrial fire brigades
• Some corrections and corrections posts
• Remote-site emergency cover

The trade-off

Put it on your calendar

Both patterns run on 24-hour tours and both average fifty-six hours, but the recovery arrives in very different sizes.

Save whichever one your department runs and the calendar fills itself in from there.

What Canadian law does to this rotation

The cycle is the same shape in both countries. What sits underneath it is not, and in Canada it is provincial rather than federal — so the same rotation can be worked and paid differently depending on where you are.

The daily ceiling follows your shift, not the statute. Ontario's Employment Standards Act caps the working day at eight hours or the number of hours in an established regular workday, if it is longer than eight. On a 24-hour rotation that established day is 24-hour, so the ceiling is 24-hour — the rotation itself sets it. Going past that needs a written agreement, and no agreement lets anyone be required past 60 hours in a week.

Eleven hours off between shifts is the ESA minimum, and a 24-hour tour has to be built around it rather than through it. Healthcare and emergency work can override that rest in a genuine emergency, but the time off has to be given back afterwards — it is substituted, not cancelled.

Overtime is triggered differently by province, and this rotation averages 56 hours. The weekly threshold runs from 40 hours in Quebec, Newfoundland and Labrador, the territories and federally, through 44 in Ontario and New Brunswick, to 48 in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. Ontario and Quebec have no daily trigger at all; British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and the territories have both, so exceeding 8 hours in a day counts even if the week does not. BC adds double time past 12 hours in a day. Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Newfoundland and Labrador calculate overtime at 1.5 times the minimum wage rather than your own rate. Same roster, a different answer in almost every jurisdiction.

And one Quebec rule that catches shift workers out: premiums added to the hourly rate, such as night or evening shift premiums, are not taken into account when calculating overtime. Your overtime is worked out on the base rate, so a night premium does not carry into it.

Averaging is what makes a cycle like this work on paper. Where the pattern does not fit a calendar week, hours can be averaged over two to four weeks for the purpose of overtime, by written agreement. If you are in a union, your union can make that agreement with your employer — and in a policing or fire service it usually has, which is why your collective agreement rather than the statute is the document that decides your pay.

Two employers sit outside all of that. The RCMP works under one national agreement with the Treasury Board rather than provincial standards — its default workweek is forty hours from Monday to Friday with a workday of a minimum of eight consecutive hours, and separate articles for variable and shift work that take a detachment off that default. Federal enforcement uses a Variable Shift Schedule Arrangement, negotiated branch by branch, so two workplaces under one contract can run different rosters. In both cases the agreement is the whole answer and the province you live in does not enter into it.

Checked 7 August 2026. Provincial rules are quoted from the Employment Standards Act of the province named and, for Quebec, from the CNESST; federal provisions from the Treasury Board agreements. Employment standards are amended and collective agreements are renegotiated — check the current text before relying on a threshold or a figure.

Common questions

What is the difference between 24/48 and 48/96?

The total hours are the same. A 24/48 works one twenty-four hour tour then takes two days off; a 48/96 works two tours back to back then takes four days off.

How many hours a week is a 24/48 schedule?

About fifty-six on average.

Which is better for family time?

Most crews who have worked both prefer the 48/96 for the four-day block, at the cost of a second consecutive tour on duty.