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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.
- 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:
Day shiftNight shiftDay off
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
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.
Scan to install — or hold it up for the officer next to you.
