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4 on 4 off schedule
Four twelve-hour shifts, then four days off. The simplest of the 24/7 rotations to hold in your head, and one of the hardest to fit into a normal week.
Also called: 4D4O4N4O, 4 days 4 off 4 nights 4 off, Continental 12-hour (4-crew)
- Shift length
- 12 hours
- Cycle
- 8 or 16 days
- Average week
- 42 hours
- Teams
- 4
What the 4 on 4 off schedule is
Four shifts on, four days off, repeating. Each shift is twelve hours, so four crews cover a post continuously.
Many agencies extend it to a sixteen-day cycle by working four days, taking four off, working four nights, then taking four off — which is the version drawn below. Others keep crews on a fixed tour, making the cycle a straight eight days.
It is the easiest rotation to explain to someone who doesn't work shifts, and the hardest to explain to a calendar, because it never lines up with the seven-day week.
How the cycle runs
The sixteen-day version, rotating from days to nights:
Set a start day, set the length to 16 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: 16
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 16 days, which does not divide by seven — so it drifts through the week and every squad gets much the same share. Around 18 to 21 full weekends a year, wherever you sit in it.
A year on this rotation: 21 full weekends off, spread through the calendar. A weekend counts only when both the Saturday and the Sunday are free. All 21 rotations compared →
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 drift
Because eight and sixteen don't divide into seven, your days off walk through the week. A block that falls on the weekend this month falls midweek the next.
This is the defining practical problem of 4 on 4 off. You cannot answer "am I off on the twelfth?" from memory the way a Panama worker can — the pattern has to be projected forward from a known start day, which is precisely the arithmetic a calendar should be doing for you.
Hours and overtime
Four twelve-hour shifts every eight days works out to forty-eight hours in each block, averaging forty-two hours a week over the cycle.
Some agencies shorten one shift or add a scheduled day off to bring the average closer to forty. Others simply pay the overtime.
Who works it
It is one of the most widely used 24/7 patterns anywhere:
- Police and sheriff's patrol
- Security and guarding
- Oil, gas and refining
- Manufacturing and process plants
- Hospital departments
- Airport and transport operations
Departments that publish this rotation
Every one of these is taken from the employer's own document — a recruitment page, a class specification or a collective agreement — not from a survey or a job board. The link goes to what that agency pays.
- Bend Police Department, OR — Article Fourteen of the agreement with the Bend Police Association offers three schedules: a 5-8 plan of "Eight (8) hours per day on the basis of….
- Deschutes County Sheriff's Office, OR — The County's own posting states the patrol roster in one line: "Patrol shifts are currently 12 hours, four days a week (2-days, 2-nights),….
- Fremont Police Department, CA — The Department states the cycle on its own careers site: "Our flex work schedule involves working 11-hour shifts for four days, then enjoying four….
- Issaquah Police Department, WA — Issaquah patrol officers work four 12-hour shifts followed by four days off, with day and evening shifts bid on according to seniority.
- Jupiter Police Department, FL — Under the current contract, road patrol officers work eleven-and-a-half hour shifts, assigned to a day platoon or night platoon, with a rotating….
- Middletown Police Department, DE — Shift Schedule: 11 ½ hour days, 4 days on, 4 days off.
- New Castle County Police, DE — Patrol officers work 11-hour shifts on a four-on, four-off rotation.
- San Mateo Police Department, CA — The City's own recruitment FAQ answers it directly: "Patrol officers currently work a rotating four days on and four days off schedule.
The trade-off
What works
- Four consecutive days off, every eight days
- Trivially simple to remember: four and four
- Long breaks make off-duty work and travel realistic
- Only fourteen or fifteen shift starts a month
What hurts
- Days off drift through the week and never settle
- Weekends off only occasionally
- Four twelve-hour shifts back to back is a hard stretch
- Impossible to eyeball months ahead without a tool
Put it on your calendar
Four on, four off never lines up with a week, so your days off walk through the calendar and no two months look alike.
Save it once and the pattern keeps walking on its own — forward for the leave request, back over what you have already worked.
Common questions
How many hours a week is 4 on 4 off?
About forty-two, averaged across the cycle — four twelve-hour shifts in every eight-day block.
Do I get every other weekend off?
No. Because the cycle doesn't divide into seven days, the days off move through the week rather than repeating on fixed weekdays.
How many days off a year does 4 on 4 off give?
Roughly half the year is off duty, though those days fall in blocks rather than in weekends.
Put the 4 on 4 off schedule on your calendar
Save the 4 on 4 off schedule once, tell BlueShifts the day your cycle starts, and the rest of the year draws itself. Court, training and the details you pick up sit on the same grid.
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