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24/72 schedule
One twenty-four hour tour, three days off — the four-platoon answer to firefighter fatigue.
- Shift length
- 24 hours
- Cycle
- 4 days
- Average week
- 42 hours
- Platoons
- 4
What the 24/72 schedule is
A crew works one twenty-four hour tour and then takes three full days off. Four days from start to repeat, and four platoons instead of the traditional three.
That fourth platoon is the whole story. Adding one drops the average week from around fifty-six hours to forty-two and turns every tour into a three-day recovery.
Departments that have made the move usually did it on fatigue and health grounds, and it costs money, which is why it is far from universal.
How the cycle runs
One four-day cycle for a single platoon:
Set a start day, set the length to 4 days, and paint each one. This pattern walks, so each time round it lands on different weekdays — which the app works out for you.
Start day: 1 September 2026Days: 4
Day shiftNight shift24-hour tourDay off
Set the template once. Your days show up on every month after it.
September 2026
Print this rotation (PDF) One page — the cycle above, and a blank grid for your own dates.
Weekends off on this rotation
This cycle is 4 days, which does not divide by seven — so it drifts through the week and every squad gets much the same share. Around 26 to 26 full weekends a year, wherever you sit in it.
A year on this rotation: 26 full weekends off, spread through the calendar. A weekend counts only when both the Saturday and the Sunday are free. All 21 rotations compared →
What the extra platoon buys
On a 24/48 you work about ten tours a month. On a 24/72 you work seven or eight, and never work two days in the same week unless you pick up overtime.
The three-day break also changes what paid duty work looks like. There is room for a second job that does not compete with recovery, which is not true of a two-day turnaround.
Hours and overtime
One twenty-four hour tour every four days averages forty-two hours a week, against about fifty-six on a 24/48.
Fewer scheduled hours often means more overtime is available, so the hours you actually work can look very different from the roster — which is exactly why it is worth recording them.
Who works it
Twenty-four hour tours, spread across four platoons:
- Fire departments
- EMS and ambulance services
- Airport rescue and firefighting
- Industrial fire brigades
- Some remote-site emergency cover
- Hazmat teams
BlueShifts. Plan Your Year. Own Your Time.
The shift calendar built for your rotation, off-duty work, and life on and off the clock.
Save this pattern once and the year fills itself in — forward as far as you want, and back over the months you have already worked.
The trade-off
What works
- Three full days off after every tour
- About forty-two hours a week
- Far better for fatigue than 24/48
- Room for a second job or study
What hurts
- Needs a fourth platoon, so it costs more
- Fewer scheduled hours can mean less base pay
- Still a full twenty-four hours on duty
- A four-day cycle drifts through the week
Put it on your calendar
One day on, three days off, and a four-day cycle that never lines up with the week.
Save it once and the shift you are working in six weeks is already on the calendar.
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 42 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
How many hours a week is 24/72?
About forty-two — one twenty-four hour tour every four days.
How is 24/72 different from 24/48?
An extra day off and an extra platoon. The 24/48 averages about fifty-six hours a week; the 24/72 averages about forty-two.
Why do departments switch to it?
Usually fatigue and health. Three days between tours gives real recovery, which two days does not.
Put the 24/72 schedule on your calendar
Save the 24/72 schedule once, tell BlueShifts the day your cycle starts, and the rest of the year draws itself. The paid duty jobs, the hours and the pay go on top of it.
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