The 24/48 shift schedule is a 3 day cycle: one 24 hour shift, then two days off, repeat. Its main rival, the 48/96 schedule, doubles everything: two 24s back to back, then four days off in a 6 day cycle. Both are three platoon firefighter shift schedules, both average 56 hours a week, and the choice between them is about rhythm, not hours.
We make Lumical, an app that scans work rosters into your calendar, so read this with that in mind. Everything below follows from the cycles themselves, and you can sketch any rotation on our free shift pattern visualizer.
24 on 48 off: how the 3 day cycle works
You report in the morning, commonly at 7 or 8 am, work a full 24, and hand over the next morning. Then you get 48 hours before the next one. Three platoons staggered one day apart put exactly one platoon on duty every calendar day.
The hours: 24 per 3 days is 8 a day, and 8 times 7 is 56. No real week contains 56, though. A calendar week catches two or three of your shifts, so you work 48 hours one week and 72 the next, and only the average lands on 56.
Because 3 does not divide 7, your duty day walks through the week: Monday this cycle, Thursday the next, then Sunday, and around it goes until everything realigns after 21 days. The off blocks are always the same 48 hours, and each one opens with a recovery morning because you walk out of the station at handover. You never get more than two nights in your own bed in a row.
The 48/96 schedule: same hours, different shape
Two consecutive 24s, then 96 hours off. That is 48 hours per 6 days, the same 8 a day, the same 56 average. Three platoons staggered two days apart still cover every calendar day, which is why a department can switch from 24/48 to 48/96 without hiring anyone. Same people, same annual hours, cut into bigger pieces.
| 24/48 | 48/96 | |
|---|---|---|
| Cycle length | 3 days | 6 days |
| On duty | one 24 hour shift | two 24 hour shifts in a row |
| Longest break | 48 hours | 96 hours |
| Average week | 56 hours | 56 hours |
| Station trips per 6 days | 2 | 1 |
| Untouched weekends | never | one in three |
Why departments switch to 48/96
The strongest argument is arithmetic. Over any six days, 24/48 means two round trips to the station and 48/96 means one. For someone living an hour out, half the commutes is real time and fuel handed back every week. The off time also consolidates: 24/48 never gives you more than two days in a row, while the 96 is four straight, long enough to travel or to work a second job’s full week around. And a recovery morning eats a smaller share of it, one groggy morning per four off days instead of one per two.
The cost is the 48 itself. Two straight days away is a long stretch for a family, and everything at home waits until day three.
There is a third option between them. The Kelly schedule spreads three 24s over a 9 day cycle with single days off in between, then pays out a 4 day break. Same 56 hour average, tighter gaps mid cycle.
The sleep math of a 48
A 48 is two nights at the station in a row. You sleep between calls on night one, and whatever you lose carries straight into night two, with nothing between them but a shift change. At a slow station that can work out fine. At a busy house the second night starts from behind, and the first day of the 96 turns into a full recovery day rather than a free one. Only your own call volume answers whether the trade is worth it, which is why the same schedule gets loved in one department and voted out in another.
This is the same two calendar day problem behind the Friday night rule: the roster shades one box, but you live the shift across two days. A 48 spans three.
Weekends on 24/48 and 48/96
Here the two patterns split cleanly. On 24/48, a shift starts every third day, and Friday, Saturday, Sunday are three consecutive days, so one of them always holds a start. Most weekends still hand you one clear day, but no weekend ever comes out completely untouched.
On 48/96, the 6 day cycle realigns with the week every 42 days, and in each 42 day stretch exactly two of the six weekends land wholly inside the 96. One full weekend in three, for every platoon, forever. The 24/48 calendar for 2026 and the 48/96 calendar draw both patterns on real dates, weekend by weekend, with 2027 linked from each page. If your partner works a different rotation, days off together shows which off days the two of you actually share.
Getting either roster into your calendar
The pattern is easy. The roster on the station wall is not: a month grid shaded in platoon colors, with trades and holdovers penciled in, where every shift crosses midnight. Typed into a phone by hand, a 24 usually gets entered as ending the same day it starts, and the back half of every shift disappears. Lumical reads a photo of that grid and files each shift with its real start and end, so a Tuesday 48 blocks Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday morning. You review everything it found before anything saves.
Working 24/48 or 48/96 from a wall roster? Get Lumical on the App Store and put the whole month in your calendar from one photo.