Background In view of the costly methods currently available for the assessment of body adiposity, anthropometric obesity indicators have proven effective in predicting cardiovascular risk. Objective To investigate the discriminatory power of body fat indicators for cardiovascular risk screening among shift workers. Methods Cross-sectional study with male employees of an iron ore extraction company. The predictive power of body fat indicators relative to cardiovascular risk was analyzed based on the Framingham risk score and metabolic syndrome by means of receiver operating characteristic curves, sensitivity, specificity, positive and negative predictive values, area under the receiver operating characteristic curve and Youden’s index. Results The prevalence of cardiovascular risk was 14.2% in the metabolic syndrome risk model. According to the Framingham score, 95.0%, 4.1% and 0.9% of the participants exhibited low, moderate and high risk, respectively. All the analyzed body fat indicators exhibited satisfactory discriminatory power for the tested cardiovascular risk models. Conclusion Waist-height ratio exhibited the highest ability to predict cardiometabolic risk in both risk models.