The DuPont Shift Schedule Explained: The 4-Week Cycle With a Full Week Off
If you work at a plant, refinery, or any site that never shuts off, there's a good chance you're on β or about to be put on β the DuPont schedule. People describe it two ways: "the one where you get a whole week off," and "the one where you go straight from days to nights and it wrecks you." Both are true. Here's how the cycle actually works, so the calendar stops feeling like a code you have to re-crack every month.
What the DuPont schedule is
The DuPont is a 28-day (4-week) rotating pattern built on 12-hour shifts, run by four crews so a site stays covered 24/7. Each crew moves through the same four weeks, just offset from the others, so at any moment one crew is on days, one is on nights, and the others are resting or rotating in.
Over the full 28 days, one crew works 14 twelve-hour shifts β seven days and seven nights β and has 14 days off. That averages out to 42 hours a week, but it does not arrive in tidy 42-hour weeks. Some weeks you work four shifts (48 hours), some weeks you work three, and one week you work none at all. That uneven spread is the whole personality of this schedule.
The 4-week cycle, week by week
Here's the classic DuPont rotation for a single crew. D = 12-hour day shift, N = 12-hour night shift, β = off:
| Week | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat | Sun |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | N | N | N | N | β | β | β |
| 2 | D | D | D | β | N | N | N |
| 3 | β | β | β | D | D | D | D |
| 4 | β | β | β | β | β | β | β |
Read straight through, one crew's month looks like this:
- 4 nights, then 3 off
- 3 days, then 1 off, then 3 nights
- 3 off, then 4 days
- 7 off β the full week
(The weekday labels are just for illustration; where the block lands on the calendar shifts as the cycle repeats.)
The two things everyone reacts to
The good: a full week off, every four weeks. Week 4 is seven consecutive days with no shift, and because week 3 ends on a run of days and week 1 of the next cycle starts on nights, that break sits in the middle of an even longer stretch away from the night rotation. It's genuinely enough time to travel, recover, or just be a normal person for a week β something most rotations never give you in one block.
The rough: the quick turnarounds. Look at week 2. You work three day shifts, get a single day off, and then start three night shifts. Going from a day rhythm to a night rhythm with barely 24 hours between is the hardest thing your body clock is asked to do here, and one day off isn't enough to reset it. The four nights that open week 1 are also a real stretch β by night four, most people are running on fumes.
So the trade is blunt: you buy that glorious week off with some brutal transitions. Whether that's worth it is personal, and it usually comes down to how well you protect sleep across the flips.
The hours-per-week catch
Because the schedule averages 42 hours but delivers them unevenly, the weeks you work four 12s hit 48 hours β and in many workplaces that's where overtime kicks in. For a lot of people that's a feature, not a bug: the built-in over-40 weeks are part of why continuous-operation jobs pay what they do. But "42 average" on paper and "48 this week, 0 next week" in your bank account and your body are very different experiences. Know which week you're in before you commit to anything.
Your exact overtime threshold, shift premiums, and how nights are paid come from your employer and any collective agreement β the pattern above tells you when you work, not what each hour is worth.
DuPont vs. the other continuous-operation patterns
The DuPont isn't the only way to cover a 24/7 site with 12-hour crews. Two you'll hear compared to it:
| Pattern | Cycle | Signature | The trade vs. DuPont |
|---|---|---|---|
| DuPont | 4 weeks | A full 7-day break each cycle | Best long break, but fast dayβnight flips |
| Pitman (2-2-3) | 2 weeks | Never more than 3 on; every other weekend off (3 days) | Steadier rhythm, but no big week-off |
| 4-on / 4-off | 8 days | Dead-simple, equal work and rest blocks | Easiest to predict, but off days drift across the calendar |
None is "best." The DuPont is built for people who want their rest concentrated into a real week away; 4-on/4-off is for people who want their life perfectly predictable; the Pitman splits the difference. (If you're wrestling with the day-to-night flips on any of these, our shift-work sleep guide walks through anchoring your sleep across the switch.)
The honest summary
The DuPont gives you something rare β a whole week off, on repeat β and charges for it with four-night runs and a same-week day-to-night turnaround. The math is 42 hours a week on average, but lived as 48s, short weeks, and one week of nothing. None of that is a problem to solve; it's just the shape of the thing. The only real trap is being surprised by it β walking into a four-night stretch or a quick flip you didn't see coming.
That's the part a shift calendar is actually for: set the DuPont rotation once, and let it lay out your real days β the four-night runs, the fast flips, and that full week off β months ahead, instead of decoding the grid every time someone asks if you're free.
General information, not workforce or legal advice. Your employer's policy and any collective bargaining agreement set your actual crew rotation, hours before overtime, and how nights and overtime are paid.