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24/48/24/96 schedule
Two twenty-four hour tours inside eight days — one tour, two days off, another, then four days clear.
Also called: 24-48-24-96, modified Kelly, 24/24/96, two tours in eight days
- Shift length
- 24 hours
- Cycle
- 8 days
- Average week
- 42 hours
- Tours
- 2 per cycle
What the 24/48/24/96 schedule is
A crew works one twenty-four hour tour, takes two days off, works a second tour, and then takes four days off. Eight days from start to repeat, with two tours inside it.
Two tours in eight days is forty-eight hours in eight days, or forty-two a week. A three-platoon 24/48 asks for about fifty-six, so the difference between them is a whole extra platoon and roughly a day a week of your life.
Departments usually arrive at it the same way they arrive at the 24/72: fatigue, recruitment, and the fact that a four-day break is worth more to most crews than the money the fourth platoon costs.
How the cycle runs
One eight-day cycle. The two faded days at the start of the calendar are the end of the previous month, not part of the pattern:
Set a start day, set the length to 8 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: 8
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.
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.
Weekends off on this rotation
This cycle is 8 days, which does not divide by seven — so it drifts through the week and every squad gets much the same share. Around 25 to 27 full weekends a year, wherever you sit in it.
A year on this rotation: 27 full weekends off, spread through the calendar. A weekend counts only when both the Saturday and the Sunday are free. All 21 rotations compared →
The modified Kelly beside it
Move the second tour a day earlier and you get the arrangement most departments call a modified Kelly: on, off, on, then four days clear. Same two tours, same forty-two hours, one day between the tours instead of two.
Murray City in Utah is a worked example of both. Its fire chief told the city council the department had run that on-off-on-then-four-days-off pattern for around twenty-three years before it moved to a 48/96, and the minutes of that meeting are the record of it.
Which of the two a department runs decides how the tours feel rather than what they cost. Two days between tours is a real recovery; one day is a turnaround.
Hours and overtime
Forty-eight hours every eight days averages forty-two a week, which is a long way under the fire-protection ceiling in the Fair Labor Standards Act — 212 hours in a twenty-eight day work period.
So on this pattern the roster itself almost never generates overtime. What generates it is callbacks, holdovers, trades and details, and those are the hours that only exist if somebody wrote them down.
Who works it
Twenty-four hour tours across four platoons rather than three:
- Fire departments
- EMS and ambulance services
- Airport rescue and firefighting
- Industrial fire brigades
- Remote-site emergency cover
- Some corrections posts
The trade-off
What works
- Four consecutive days off every cycle
- Forty-two hours a week, not fifty-six
- Only two tours in every eight days
- The long break comes round every cycle
What hurts
- Needs a fourth platoon, so it costs the city money
- Fewer scheduled hours can mean less base pay
- Still a full twenty-four hours on duty
- An eight-day cycle drifts through the week
Put it on your calendar
Two tours in eight days, arranged so the four-day break lands after the second one - and eight days never lines up with a week, so it walks.
Save the eight days once and the calendar tells you which tour you are on next month, and where the long break falls.
Common questions
How many hours a week is a 24/48/24/96 schedule?
Forty-two on average — two twenty-four hour tours every eight days.
How is it different from a 24/48?
A 24/48 works one tour then two days off on a three-day cycle and averages about fifty-six hours a week. This adds a four-day break after the second tour and drops the average to forty-two.
Is the modified Kelly the same schedule?
Nearly. Both work two tours in eight days for the same forty-two hours. The modified Kelly puts one day between the two tours; this puts two.
Put the 24/48/24/96 schedule on your calendar
Save the 24/48/24/96 schedule once, tell BlueShifts the day your cycle starts, and the rest of the year draws itself. Then the off-duty work you pick up around it goes in beside the shifts.
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